Obama Rejoices

“The McCain surge is over,” say the latest polls. And Obama is back out front with female voters. The Palin effect is no longer working.

During the two weeks after he named Sarah Palin his running mate, John McCain could dream realistically of the White House. In the meantime, his lead has melted between two to three points and Barack Obama is back out front by five points, according to the latest CBS/New York Times poll.

Why? The answer is simple: because of the economy. The poll was conducted on September 16th and Lehman Brothers had already slid into financial ruin. How does one measure that effect, if there is an effect?

Researchers divided the target audience into two groups: those who believe the economic situation will get worse, and those who believe it will remain unchanged. In the first group, the economic pessimists, 62 percent say they’ll vote for Obama and only 29 percent will vote for McCain. In the “things aren’t that bad” group it’s exactly reversed: 29 percent support Obama and 63 percent support McCain.

That means the more the fear of a deepening crisis, the greater the chance people will vote for Obama. One must assume that the atmospheric picture won’t become any clearer in the coming few weeks because the virtual collapse of the economy – investment banks, insurance firms, etc. – will eventually be felt in the real economy – jobs, consumer confidence and the readiness to invest.

Voting tendency measured by gender has also turned against McCain. At the beginning of September after McCain’s selection of Palin as running mate, women (black and white) favored McCain by 5 percentage points. That has now reversed itself completely. Women now favor Obama 54 to 38 percent over McCain. Even white women now favor Obama, albeit by a lesser margin of 2 points.

Ergo: The McCain surge is over. The Palin effect appears to have dried up. If the economic situation continues to favor Obama, then the Senator from Illinois won the election this week. These aren’t only the hard times that generally damage the party in power, they’re hard times not seen since the crash of 1929. And they won’t be over by November 4th.

“Obama for President” has become “Obama is President.” This prediction is valid. And it’s valid for as long as it’s valid, perhaps even until tomorrow. Besides, you quote your surveys and I quote mine. According to the Rasmussen poll that uses the largest sampling audience (3,000 people, three times the size of the CBS/Times poll), McCain is still ahead. And that poll was taken on September 16th, too.