The latest Newsweek poll is headlined, "Barack's Bounce." But this is no bounce. This is, instead, leaping retribution against the Bush administration, now that the primary smoke has cleared and the American mind is beginning to focus.
In May, when the protracted battle between Obama and Hillary Clinton was in what seemed like its fifth year rather than month, the former scored a dead heat against John McCain (46-46).
Now, with Clinton having lain hors de combat since early June, Obama has bolted to a 51 to 36 percent lead over McCain. (If there's anything at all unsettling in the poll's methodology, it's that the polling was conducted among registered, as opposed to likely, voters.)
As Newsweek puzzled: "For weeks" -- what, all of two of them? -- "many political experts and pollsters have been wondering why the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain had stayed so tight, even after the Illinois senator wrested the nomination from Hillary Clinton."
I have always found such puzzlement puzzling itself. It seems that after every major political event the media tell us that the pollsters and experts are braced in splendid anxiety for signs of immediate blowback from the public, which rarely comes -- immediately, that is.
There is always a lag. You could call it an awareness lag, or a sleeping-giant lag, or some variation of William Ogden's famous "cultural lag"; but whatever you call it, the pollsters, I can assure you, are well aware of the polling phenomenon and expect no such immediacy.
So, with the immediacy out of the way, how is the electoral landscape shaping up for Obama? Short answer: There is, simply, no bad news in the Newsweek poll for the Democratic nominee, and things couldn't appear bleaker for McCain.
For instance those Hillary supporters, 34 percent of whom suggested to pollsters only last month that they might very well travel to McCain's camp in the event of Obama's nomination lockdown? Well, that statistic has already suffered casualties of roughly 50 percent, with Democrats "who supported Clinton during the primaries now favor[ing] Obama over McCain by 69 percent to 18 percent."
As for registered -- again, that adjective does trouble, but remember the phenomenological lag, which is even more severe among ... -- independents? A shift is underway here as well, and it's nearly as seismic as that among Hillary's supporters. For they "have also moved toward Obama, backing him by a 48 percent to 36 percent margin after splitting about evenly in last month's poll."
But that, literally, isn't the half of it.
For McCain's advisers, the following are damn near suicide-watch figures:
"Women voters in the new poll prefer [Obama] over McCain by 21 points.... Overall, voters see Obama as the preferred agent of 'change'" -- and this, need I remind you, is a "change" election -- "by a margin of 51 percent to 27 percent. Younger voters, in particular, are more likely to see Obama that way: those 18 to 39 favor the Illinois senator by 66 percent to 27 percent."
[Note from the polling world's empirical wisdom: If a leading candidate's national figures exceed his opponent's by 10 percent, this indicates even his opponent's "safe" states have slid into trouble].
Newsweek, however, tried its best to instill some suspense. "History provides hope for the GOP," according to one -- what else? -- GOP strategist, "point[ing] out that in May 1988 when the primaries ended, Democrat Michael Dukakis enjoyed a 54 percent to 38 percent lead over George H.W. Bush."
Yet George H.W. Bush wasn't following his offspring of Doltdom, George W. Bush, who now has the full confidence of a full 14 percent of the American electorate.
And it was that stastistic that inspired my somewhat greater confidence in Newsweek's somewhat outlier poll.
For other polls are finding roughly the same level of extreme voter dissatisfaction; meaning, perhaps, that Newsweek's methodology was not, after all, eccentric or flawed, but merely caught the indicative winds of a blowout first.
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