McCain's "very favorable" ratings have been stuck all year. They reflect a Republican base that is in the dumps. On the otherhand, Palin is of and from the Republican base, and if she passes the media gauntlet, she'll succeed in changing this race for McCain. You only need to look at what she did for McCain's fundraising numbers, $10M in a couple of days, to realize she has this potential.
A large part of why Obama is ahead of McCain throughout the year has been because of the disparity of Democrats to Republicans in the sample. There is always a Democratic advantage, and many times its 8-10 percent. Take the recent CBS poll that found Obama up 48-40.
If you look into who they are polling, partisan-wise, you'll find a make up of 26% Republican, 35% Democrat, and 38% Independent. Underlying that 9% partisan advantage is an assumption of a a massive underlying shift in the electorate-- one that has happened since 2000 and 2004, and even since the 2006 midterms.
In the last two presidential races, this was the exit polling of partisan voters:
04 00
Democratic 37 39
Republican 37 35
Independent 26 27
From that, all things being the same, we could project a 38-36 Democratic over Republican advantage in turnout in 2008, and Independents would make up the rest, at 27 percent. But CBS finds the Democrats at 35 percent, 3 percent below, and Republicans even further down, at 26 percent, having fallen a full 10 percent.
Now, many of us would not be shocked at this. Things are not the same, and one might point to the '06 mid-term election as a pre-confirmation of the 08 projected numbers, but they really don't confirm the shift at all:
06 04 00
Democratic 38 37 39
Republican 36 37 35
Independent 26 26 27
In fact, as you can see in the exit poll above of House votes, they just confirm the decades trend, with enough of a slight improvement to have shifted battleground races to the Democratic Party.
Enter 2008, and the CBS poll is projecting that Independents become the largest political block in 2008:
08 06 04 00
Independent 38 26 26 27
Democratic 35 38 37 39
Republican 26 36 37 35
CBS is not alone in this, they have a similar partisan makeup I've seen in other polls, because they reflect the 2008 GE climate in the abstract. See Rasmussen: (For the month of August, the targets are 40.6% Democrat, 31.6% Republican, and 27.8% unaffiliated. For July, the targets were 41.4% Democrat, 31.5% Republican, and 27.1% unaffiliated).
Here's the reality of what Palin means:
Then there's the talk about Palin being the Eagleton of Republicans. This is wishful thinking, and denial of whats going on-- all wrapped up into one big long Labor Day political junkie echo chamber thats morphed into exactly the sort of hubris which Joe Trippi warns. If you want to learn about how the right feels about Palin (and McCain), read more of Byron York and less of TPM and Jeralyn. I get the point, which Jeralyn makes below in the comments of her thread, about why she's hyping up a 'drop-out' date for Palin:
Still a big 'if' on whether Palin passes through the media gauntlet without losing her national credibility. They will not settle for a Wed. speech either, but will also want to test her in a scrum (this is where Quayle became Quayle). But this gets to the larger point, of whether the Palin pick has the potential to shake-up the entire election. I doubt it, but not to the point where I'd entirely discount it from happening. Especially now that the Republicans have their evangelical conservative base excited.
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