Results from the new Washington Post/ABC News poll released last night show Barack Obama continuing to lead John McCain by what has become a fairly consistent advantage of between 3-6 points, although the not so great news is that there was no post-Clinton bounce to speak of among adults (May results are in parentheses.)
| Candidate | RVs | Adults |
| Obama | 49 | 48 (51) |
| McCain | 45 | 42 (44) |
These results do track fairly consistently with RCP's 7-poll average lead of 3.8% for Obama, FiveThirtyEight's 3 point Obama advantage and Pollster's Obama +5.6 trend estimate, all of which were calculated prior to the ABC/WaPo poll.
The fact that Obama does better among adults than registered voters should come as no surprise and reinforces the importance of Democratic voter registration drives this cycle.
All in all, there's plenty to keep the general election narrative in the vicinity of "why isn't Barack Obama doing better?" which is precisely the central theme of the ABC News pdf of the results as well as the Washington Post summary article. Here are a couple of the results that fuel that fire.
In the first Washington Post-ABC News poll since the Democratic nomination contest ended, Obama and McCain are even among political independents, a shift toward the presumptive Republican nominee over the past month. On the issues, independents see McCain as more credible on fighting terrorism and are split evenly on who is the stronger leader and better on the Iraq war.
And...
At this point four years ago, Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry held identical leads over President Bush among all adults and among registered voters.
But there's plenty of good news for Barack Obama in these results too, including that pesky enthusiasm gap:
A majority of voters, 55 percent, said they are enthusiastic about Obama's candidacy, while 42 percent said the same for McCain. Three times as many said they are "very enthusiastic" about Obama as said so about McCain.
And on issues and attributes...
The two candidates are...evenly matched on the question of who is the stronger leader, with 46 percent of the public rating each as top.On four other attributes tested in the poll, Obama has significant advantages. He leads by 34 points as the candidate who would do more to bring needed change to Washington, by 18 points on empathy, by 15 points on standing up to lobbyists and special interests, and by 13 points on better representing people's "personal values." [...]
...on Iraq, the public is evenly split, with 47 percent saying they trust McCain more and 46 percent having more faith in Obama.
So, to be honest, Democrats would be foolish to see this poll as a cause for concern for Obama. Let WaPo spin this statistic as evidence of a divided Democratic Party:
But Obama still has some work to do to unite the Democratic Party. Almost nine in 10 Republicans now support McCain, while not quite eight in 10 Democrats said they support Obama.
For me, it's a glass half full scenario. Obama and McCain split independents, McCain does more than 10% better among Republicans than Obama does among Democrats AND Obama is still winning. It's a perfect foundation for Obama to run a base general election strategy, to appeal to Democrats (get up toward 90%) and in the process pull independents with him, as opposed to targeting independents with some flawed run to middle strategy that never works. Obama has a natural appeal among independents, so will likely always have that 50% of them. Ahh, wouldn't it be sweet if the post-partisan wins by appealing to the partisans. That would make my year.
But among all the findings from this poll, the result that is perhaps the most satisfying has nothing to do with Barack Obama at all. I offer this, in closing, without comment:
Given economic discontent (and $4 gas) atop the unpopular Iraq war, Bush's job approval rating has dropped to a new low in ABC/Post polls, 29%; 68% now disapprove, the highest in any presidential approval poll dating to Gallup's first in 1938 (surpassing Harry Truman's 67% disapproval and Richard Nixon's 66%.)
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