Another Poll, Another Close Obama-McCain Race
Barack Obama and John McCain are in a statistical dead-heat in a new Diageo/Hotline poll conducted June 5-8. Obama edges McCain 44 percent to 42 percent but that is within the survey’s 3.5 percent margin of error. You can compare this to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted June 6-9 that had Obama ahead 47 percent to 41 percent and the June 4-5 CNN/Opinion Research poll that also had Obama’s 49 percent to 46 percent lead within the margin of error.
Obama leads McCain 43 percent to 37 percent on the question of who would do the best job handling economy and 44 percent to 31 percent on the issue of health care. McCain leads 49 percent to 41 percent on handling Iraq. (The challenge with some of these kinds of questions is knowing what voters mean when they say, particularly on Iraq, that one or the other would handle it better. A question in state-by-state general election match-up polls by Rasmussen is whether voters care more about getting the troops out of Iraq by the end of the next President’s first term or winning the war. The answer is usually “getting the troops out” and more believe that Obama is likely to do that, just as more believe McCain would be more likely to win the war).