The Bounce

6 comments July 27th, 2008

 

I had expected that Barack Obama would at best only hold his own in the polls, or perhaps decline a bit, in the wake of his travels abroad.

Even he said the other day that he wouldn’t be surprised if there was a fleeting dip in the numbers.

Moreover, I thought the overblown flap over the hospital visit would hurt him a little.

But the latest Gallup Daily Tracking Poll results, reflecting surveys from Thursday through Saturday, SHOW Obama opening a lead of 9 percentage points over John McCain.

To be sure, Gallup’s Frank Newport cautions that bounces can be transitory. And, of course, there are likely to be ups and downs for both candidates in polls over the next four months.

But a 9-point lead ain’t bad, especially considering that Obama hasn’t trailed McCain in any polls since these two candidates emerged as their respective parties’ presumptive nominees.

POSTSCRIPT: Incidentally, I saw another poll the other day that showed Obama running 9 percentage points behind McCain among white voters.

The uninitiated may not recognize it, but that’s a great number for Obama. If he runs only 9 points behind McCain among white voters in the November election, he’ll win easily.

Democratic presidential candidates have carried the white vote only once since World War II (LBJ in ‘64), yet they’ve won six elections during that time and lost two others by only very narrow margins. One of those losses (Gore in 2000) was only in the Electoral College. He carred the popular tally by more than 500,000 votes.