CE Week #3: “Analysis: Obama has advantage in head-to-head with McCain”
- Story Highlights
- Polls suggest Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain would be tied
- Sen. Barack Obama would have a clear lead over McCain, polls suggest
- Men would be more likely to vote for Obama than Clinton in a general election
From Bill Schneider
CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sen. John McCain became the likely Republican nominee after Mitt Romney decided to suspend his campaign Thursday. Now, the Democrats are debating who would do better against the Arizona Republican.
Two polls this month have asked registered voters nationwide how they would vote if the choice were between McCain and Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton.
A CNN poll, conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation February 1-3, shows Clinton three points ahead of McCain, 50 percent to 47 percent. That’s within the poll’s margin of error of 3 percentage points, meaning that the race is statistically tied..
A Time magazine poll, conducted February 1-4, also shows a dead heat between Clinton and McCain. Each was backed by 46 percent of those polled.
Sen. Barack Obama believes he can do better, arguing “I’ve got appeal that goes beyond our party.”
In the CNN poll, Obama leads McCain by 8 points, 52 percent to 44 percent. That’s outside the margin of error, meaning that Obama has the lead.
And in the Time poll, Obama leads McCain by 7 points, 48 percent to 41 percent — a lead also outside of the poll’s margin of error of 3 percentage points.
In both polls, Obama looks stronger than Clinton. Why?
Obama’s explanation: “I think there is no doubt that she has higher negatives than any of the remaining Democratic candidates. That’s just a fact, and there are some who will not vote for her.”
That was three weeks ago. Now, only two Democratic candidates remain.
Clinton does have higher negatives than Obama — and McCain. Forty-four percent of the public say they don’t like Clinton, compared with 36 percent who don’t like McCain and 31 percent who don’t like Obama, according to the CNN poll conducted February 1-3.
Why does Obama do better against McCain than Clinton? Obama does do a little better than Clinton with independents and Republicans.
But the big difference is men: Men give McCain an 18-point lead over Clinton, 57 percent to 39 percent, according to the CNN poll. The margin of error for that question was plus or minus 5 percentage points.
But if McCain and Obama went head to head, McCain’s lead among men shrinks to three, 49 percent to 46 percent — statistically a tie.
Women, on the other hand, vote for either Clinton or Obama by similar margins.
Some Democrats may be worried about how Obama will fare with white voters. Whites give McCain a 15-point lead over Clinton, (56 percent for McCain, 41 percent for Clinton).
But Obama actually fares better than Clinton with white voters. McCain still leads, but by a smaller margin, (52 to 43 percent).
Obama argues that he can reach across party lines. And he does do a little better than Clinton with Independents and Republicans, at least in these polls.
But the big difference is that Clinton doesn’t draw very well with men. Obama does.
All AboutJohn McCain • Hillary Clinton • Barack Obama
Well this goes against everything Mr. Kautzman has ever taught us. This entire article is just taking national polls and trying to draw conclusions from them. What we all know is that you should never listen to national polls because they are never right, we discussed that in class today, and basically every time we discuss the current election. They are unreliable. There is some truth to this article though. Obama is leading Hillary in support from men, independents and Republicans, or “Obamacans”. But all the national polls put aside, I really do believe that Obama has a better chance of beating McCain than Hillary does. Personally I have no problem with a female leader, but the thing is lots of people in America do. True, lots of people in America aren’t too fond of an African-American leader, but more Americans are uncomfortable about a female leader. What we also have learned from this class is that young people are very apathetic and in past elections have not had a great voter turn out. What Obama does have in his favor is that he is inspiring the young Americans to come out and vote. Not only has he persuaded them to come out and vote, but to vote for him. It’ going to be a close race, but in my humble opinion it’s looking like Obama in 2008.
I would say that Obama has an advantage in a head-to-head with McCain, but purely because Obama is less controversial. McCain is extremely pro-war and even some of the popular Republican radio show hosts or pundits are saying that Republicans should not vote for him. Pundits are people who are “specialists” on politics without ever being a senator or really involved.
This article is basing their ideas mainly on the polls. As we learned, the elections are so far off that a whole bunch of different things could occur to change the outcome. If there were a terrorist attack close to the election, McCain would gain support and would most likely win due to his strong anti-terrorist/pro-war stance. The polls, as of now, cannot predict what will happen in the long run. Also, polls always have error. The ideal poll relies on 1,000 to 1,500 people and typically has a marginal error of about 3 percent. If the polls are from CNN or Time there is no real way to make sure the demographics of the people polling are reflecting the actual demographics of the people in the United States. If these sources could accurately poll people of all races, socioeconomic statuses, genders, and other influencing factors, the article might be reliable. Polls can be deceiving, like the one with the Literary Digest magazine during the depression. The magazine polled people whose names came from auto licensing lists and phone books. The problem was that only the rich had cars and phones. The poll inaccurately stated that the Republican candidate, Alf Landon, would win- the candidate wanted by the wealthy.
I also think that Obama would do better against the Republican candidate than Clinton. Clinton is very controversial and people either love her or hate her. The author does have a good point though when he said that Clinton doesn’t draw votes well with men and Obama does. It will be interesting to see what plays out as the elections come closer.
“But the big difference is men.” Well, obviously. The stereotypical woman couldn’t handle the White House. And yes Hillary is not a stereotypical woman, but she still is a woman. When she broke down she most likely lost many of the male votes she had. But aside from Hillary: Obama. He not only has the male vote over Hillary, but he must have quite a bit of the woman, because there are more woman in America than men. But Obama has another factor that helps him, the young. Yes, we know that the young 18 to 28 year olds are an apathetic bunch. We learned in the first unit that we don’t care about politics. We only care that we have the right to vote, not that we vote. Obama, though has motivated this young apathetic generation. In Washington, the caucuses were packed with many new comers to caucusing and ability to caucus. We learned about that in class. The caucuses in town, in our areas were exploding with new caucateers. Having the youth to vote for him gives Obama a head up in competing with McCain. Yes, in the male vote McCain has a lead, but Obama can and has proven that he motivates the youth. McCain is old. That alone takes away the youth. If it were any other election, I believe that it would not matter, but Obama has reached out and grabbed the attention and action of the youth. It will be a deciding factor in this election. No, it will be the deciding factor in this election.
I always said that Obama has a greater chance of winning over McCain. I convinced my mom that the party and the independents were too divided over Hillary. Too many people hate her guts for her to win the presidency because if she got the Democratic nomination then the people who absolutely hate her will vote for McCain. Obama is the only candidate with the presidential charisma to carry the Democratic Party to victory. Although this whole article is based on polling data, it could be pretty accurate. I believe that the country’s Democrats and the country’s Independents will be divided if Hillary gets the nomination. I like Hillary, I would love a woman president, and to tell the truth she and Obama’s stances on things are very similar. But look at the way Obama stands, listen to way he speaks, he brings me back to the good FDR days. He has the presidential charisma. He might be young but maybe youth is what the government needs (after all we’ve taken over everything else from computer programming to medicine). This article mentions a little what demographics vote for which people. Men are mostly likely to vote for Obama over Hillary. Women are divided between following their gender and following their gender’s leader (Oprah). African Americans are Obama supporters, African Americans also vote mostly Democrat. Latinos are voting overwhelmingly for Hillary, Latinos usually go Democratic anyway, but they could be hesitant for voting for a black man. The middle class white women and men are divided between Obama and Hillary, thus equaling out both sides and putting them in a neck to neck race. Hopefully Obama can catch up and exceed Hillary so that we can get the Republicans out and possible have a critical election. A critical election is where an electoral “earthquake” takes place, and new issues emerge, new coalitions replace old ones, and the majority party is often displaced by the minority party. Critical election periods are sometimes marked by a national crisis and may require more than one election to bring about a new party era. This election could be the next big thing… and in response to Stephanie this could be the next big thing. This definitely could be the next big thing.
Kautzman was talking about this issue on Tuesday, i.e., what would happen if it came down to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton against John McCain. All this article is talking about is polls, polls, polls, and more polls. As Kautzman said to us, you can throw all those polls out the window because they don’t matter. These media polls don’t tell us the whole story. As human beings, we change our minds a lot. One day people could be voting for Barack Obama and next the day Hillary Clinton. Speaking of those two Democratic candidates, I think Obama has a good chance of beating Hillary Clinton. Obama is leading Hillary in support from men and independents. Obama is also getting support from Republicans which is a plus since that could swing some votes away from McCain over to Obama. I believe Obama is likely to become our next President of the United States. I want some fresh blood in the White House. Obama represents change and that’s what America needs. The old way of doing things isn’t working, so it’s time to replace it with something new. Barack Obama is getting people like me to vote, which is amazing because we young people have a history of not getting out to vote.
So what?
So men would vote for McCain more than Obama or Clinton.
As we have discussed multiple times in class, men predominantly vote for the GOP candidate.
I would also argue that of all the major candidates, Obama seems to have the least amount of negatives on his side. The one negative Barack has is his “lack of experience.”
But some major issues lie with McCain and Clinton. McCain’s health is actually a major issue. You better like the guy under him almost as much as McCain if you don’t want to be really upset if he has a serious health problem. He is over seventy years old. And Clinton has more baggage than her entourage can carry around. I’m not saying it will, but who is to say that her being in the White House under a very careful eye of the media will lead to the discovery of even more scandal?
But as we have said many times in class, polls don’t mean anything. It might be an indication of how some people feel, but there is no way to know for certain until the final ballots are totaled.
Overall I found this article to be of little importance and offer no new information. I think the American population needs to stop trying to read the ending to the book before the book is even written.
Connor Christeson
I find this article very odd I guess. All these statistics they have of saying Barack is going to be our next president seems a bit odd. Don’t get me wrong, that’s who I’m voting for but we’ve been taught the other way and not believing word for word what national polls say. Sad this is a lot of people reading this will probably believe them whole-heartedly, it might even effect how they vote. It’s just like frontloading how if you get to go before other states you have a greater effect on the outcome in later states, these early conclusions on the election will probable skew peoples vote because of what they have read.
On the other hand I find it interesting about the statistics they brought forward. Like how Barack will fairs better of Clinton with white votes. With never having an African American president you’d think it wouldn’t be that way. Not saying that the whole country is racist, but people don’t do well with change. One thing I don’t like as much about this article is how they talk about how Barack can do better than everyone, but they don’t really have any educated guess as to why, just more polls. That’s what I’m curious about.
~Ryan Brannan
I am replying to a majority of the people, not just one. Throughout reading all of the posts to this article all I heard was, “Mr. Kautzman told us too never believe those statistics, and just throw them out.” Well he did tell us this in class, and still does, but why can’t we believe them? They could have some accuracy too them. I don’t agree with Ryan Brannan when he says that this is like front loading, I can’t even seem to come up with a connection of the two. I disagree with Connor when he says, ” but who is to say that her (Hillary Clinton) being in the White House under a very careful eye of the media will lead to the discovery of even more scandal?” Why would it lead to scandal, because her husband had some scandal? That doesn’t lead me to believe that she would produce scandal at all. This brings me too my next point, if it does come down to Clinton or Obama against McCain who will win? The answer is McCain! Mr. Kautzman mentioned this in class and I have taken it deep into thought. The United States is not ready for a change of the gratitude. The country is not mature enough to vote for a women or an African American.
Cody, I still don’t understand why you still believe in those polls. How do we know these polls are representing the demographic groups equally? All these polls are doing is trying to get the American people to get excited about the election. If I was a celebrity anchor, I could throw out a poll and people would believe me. That just goes to show how stupid people can be. Connor brought up the possibility of the media bringing up a Hillary Clinton scandal. All these candidates have some dirt on them because nobody in the world is perfect. It also gives the media something to talk about. If Hillary Clinton does indeed become our President, her every decision will come under a great deal of scrutiny. Cody, she’s a Clinton – they will have some kind of dirt on her to portray her negatively in the media. I think the United States is ready for a change and that change would be voting for Barack Obama as our next president. Barack Obama brings change to the table for the people. Don’t get me wrong, McCain is probably the best person on the Republican side to be President, but I think his age will draw some voters away from him.