Obama v. McCain (Nevada)
Posted on April 23rd, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
|
What a difference two months make. On the day of the Wisconsin primary, Obama was leading McCain by twelve in Nevada, and now trails by five. No doubt everyone will say that this doesn’t matter, but I found the size of the swing and some of the crosstabs to be pretty remarkable. Nevada is a competitive state this year, and it is considered a toss-up, so Obama’s slide over the last two months, if it is not just a temporary result of the primary fight, is bad news for the Democrats. Clinton runs even more poorly overall (as she did in February), but Obama retains less Democratic support (just 59% of Democrats say they will back him, and 29% say they will back McCain) while he also picks up some additional Republicans and independents. The internal movement has been very interesting: in February, 30-39 year olds backed Obama 60-34, and have since flipped and now back McCain 51-47. Instead of losing all but the 65+, as he did two months ago, McCain now just loses among 40-49 year olds by four and among 18-29 year olds by a wide margin of 24. Obama now has a 51% unfav rating, which is 13 points higher than it was two months ago. Obviously, unfav ratings tend to go up over time, but this is a pretty significant change. The “good” news for Obama is that Clinton’s unfavs are worse (56%). Meanwhile, McCain’s unfavs have gone down from 53% to 43%.
Filed under: politics
[...] Notably, when Obama loses large numbers of the thirtysomething set, this coincides with a significant loss of overall support, as polling from Nevada has shown. Meanwhile, in the states where Obama is less popular overall the youngest cohorts are not necessarily more supportive than their elders, but may be less so, at which point some of his greatest reserves are to be found among the Boomers. That doesn’t mean that most Boomers back him, but that their levels of support are more consistent from state to state than among other generations and they are more constant over time. Obamaism may be a fad for the young, but for a certain kind of Boomer it is a long-deferred dream come true.   [...]