Independents And November

by Steve Soto

Much was made in the media late yesterday about Gallup's latest poll, taken from April 18-20, which now shows that Obama has regained a seven-point lead (49%-42%) over Clinton nationally among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters in the weekend tracking poll and even leads by ten points (50%-40%) in an updated point-in-time poll.

The result should not look so surprising: The sample that Gallup used had more independents (39%) than Democrats (36%).

It's a legitimate debate as to whether or not that representation, or the low representation of Republican voters in that sample (25%) has any predictive value for November. But the same poll, again heavy with independents, showed Bush's approval rating dropping to 28%, and nearly 7 in 10 of those polled now say that Bush's tenure in the White House is a failure. Clearly, independents will be receptive in the general election to an argument that Bush has been a failure, and it will be easy for Obama (or even Clinton if she somehow gets through this thing - unlikely, I know) to damage McCain by simply hammering the point that a McCain presidency would be Bush's third term.

This poll shows Bush would be a serious drag on McCain. Straight Talk will continually smear Obama to divert attention from his embrace of Bush's agenda, yet to survive he'll selectively try and distance himself from Bush and his record. This would not sit well with the Stepford Kool-Aid drinkers in the 28% base. In addition, Obama should make it impossible for McCain to walk this line by hammering something else: an AP/Yahoo poll out yesterday showed that aside from economic concerns, respondents wanted the next president to place the highest priority on protecting Social Security and Medicare, and getting our troops out of Iraq (see PDF inside the link). Nothing else came close. McCain has already gone on record in full support of Bush's agenda on both subjects: he still wants to privatize Social Security; and he has no plans to change course at all in Iraq.

Head-to-head Gallup polls already indicate that both Democrats lead McCain, with Clinton having a slightly larger lead. Once the Democrats have a candidate and make this a "me or him" contest, they'll be able to remind voters daily about McCain's actual positions and embrace of a failed presidency, and what McCain would do to the federal courts. At that point, I suspect that these numbers will move even more to the Democrats' favor, bringing independent voters back from their renewed crush on McCain.