Opinion: Voters grade Barack Obama and John McCain
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The folks at the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released a poll Thursday tracking the ‘passion gap’ between Barack Obama and John McCain, which we already told you about.
But there’s an interesting tidbit buried deep within the poll results that should have some bells going off inside McCain headquarters. Or maybe they were already going off, and that’s part of the reason Rick Davis ceded some campaign turf to Steve Schmidt.
The finding has to do with measuring how the candidates are making the sale. Obama -- doing all right. McCain -- well, let’s let the Pew folks tell it:
A solid majority (56%) give the Obama campaign letter grades of A or B for the job he is doing to convince the American public to vote for him, while only 32% say the same of the McCain campaign. More than a third (35%) offer a grade of C to McCain’s campaign so far, and nearly as many (30%) say the campaign has earned a D or F. The grades voters give to the Obama campaign for the job it is doing convincing them to vote for him are the highest measured for any candidate over the past four election cycles. In June 2004, for example, just 39% gave Bush’s efforts an A or B; even fewer gave high grades to Kerry’s campaign (31%). In contrast, McCain’s middling grades are slightly lower than those awarded to Bush in both 2000 and 2004. McCain’s campaign does garner higher grades than the 1996 Dole campaign, which only 22% graded highly. In this regard, the 2008 campaign has the largest disparity in high grades for the Democratic and Republican candidates over the past four election cycles (24 points). The gap between the grades for Obama and McCain is even larger than for Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in July 1996; at that time, 37% gave Clinton an A or B, while just 22% gave top grades to Dole. The differences in the ratings of the two presidential campaigns are reflected in the opinions of their partisans. Nearly eight-in-ten Democratic voters (79%) give the Obama campaign letter grades of A or B for the job he is doing to convince the American public to vote for him, and a smaller majority of Republican voters (54%) give high marks to the McCain campaign. More independents give A or B grades to the Obama campaign than to the McCain campaign (49% v. 31%). In addition, while more than a third of Republicans (35%) give high grades to Obama, just 16% of Democrats give high grades to McCain.
McCain was asked about the poll Thursday -- specifically the bit about voters being more excited about Obama at this stage than they are about him. His response goes a long way toward explaining another finding from that poll: ‘Relatively few voters’ think the candidates have been too negative. But at the same time, McCain’s comment indicates that his focus is on the war in Iraq and national security when polls show most of the country is more concerned with the economy -- whining or not.
Said McCain: ‘I admire and respect the campaign that Sen. Obama has run. He has done a fine job in motivating many, many people. I am confident that as we go through this campaign that I will convince the majority of voters in this country that I am the person to lead this nation through very difficult times. ... Sen. Obama didn’t support the surge, wanted us to pull out, said that it would fail. I supported it when it was the toughest thing to do. I believe that my record on national security and keeping this country safe is there, and the American people will examine our records, and I believe that I will win.’
-- Scott Martelle
Top photo: Democrat Barack Obama. Credit: Jae C. Hong / Associated Press
