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Loading ...Poll: Obama struggling to win over Clinton voters
09.23.2008 8:16am EDT
(Washington) Barack Obama’s support from backers of Hillary Rodham Clinton is stuck smack where it was in June, a poll showed Tuesday, a stunning lack of progress that is weakening him with members of the Democratic Party in the close presidential race.
An Associated Press-Yahoo News poll shows that among adults who backed his rival during their bitter primary campaign, 58 percent now support Obama. That is the same percentage who said so in June, when Clinton ended her bid and urged her backers to line up behind the Democratic senator from Illinois.The poll shows that while Obama has gained ground among Clinton’s supporters – 69 percent view him favorably now, up 9 percentage points from June – this has yet to translate into more of their support.
In part, this is because their positive views of Republican presidential nominee John McCain have also improved during this period.
Those supporting McCain have also edged up from 21 percent to 28 percent, with the number of undecided staying constant, the survey showed.
Clinton backers’ reluctance to support Obama helps explain why he is having a tougher time solidifying partisan supporters than McCain. Overall, 74 percent of Democrats say they will vote for Obama, compared with 87 percent of Republicans behind the Arizona senator. About nine in 10 Clinton supporters are Democrats.
The problem that supporters of Clinton, the New York senator, have with Obama seems to flow from their measure of him as a candidate, not from issues. From establishing a timeline for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq to abortion to canceling tax cuts on the rich, their views of the importance of issues are virtually identical to Democrats in general.
Yet they find Obama less likable, honest, experienced and inspiring than Democrats overall do, and have a better view of McCain. And while majorities of Clinton supporters say Obama shares their values and understands ordinary Americans, they’re less likely to say so than Democrats overall.
“It’s just a gut feeling, my gut tells me he’s not it,” Leslye Burgess, 53, a federal Treasury Department manager and Democrat from Fairfax, Va., said of Obama. The Clinton supporter added, “I’ll have to fight with myself between now and November” about how she’ll vote.
The GOP’s selection of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate has had no net impact on Clinton loyalists – a group Republicans were hoping to lure by picking the Alaska governor. Twenty-one percent in the poll said Palin on the ticket makes them likelier to back McCain, 21 percent said it makes them less likely, and 58 percent said it had no impact.
The choice of Joe Biden as Democratic vice presidential candidate makes them a bit likelier to vote for Obama, but seven in 10 said it won’t be a factor.
Other September polls have shown Obama making progress in recent weeks with one-time Clinton backers and doing better with them than in the AP-Yahoo News survey. One by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center had Obama with 78 percent of their support and McCain with 18 percent; another by ABC News and The Washington Post showed Obama ahead 72 percent to 23 percent.
Those figures measured Clinton supporters who are registered voters – who in the AP-Yahoo News poll leaned toward Obama over McCain 61 percent to 26 percent. The discrepancies in the polls might come from how they were conducted.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Clinton supporters are turning to Obama “in huge numbers” and noted that the AP-Yahoo News data differed from other polls. He said strong feelings by Clinton supporters were understandable considering the length and intensity of the Democratic primaries and said of Clinton, “She’s done everything we’ve asked her to do.”
Clinton spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said the New York senator has campaigned in or planned to visit seven tightly contested states. Asked to explain why some of her supporters still oppose Obama, Strand said, “She’s going to continue to do whatever she can to convince everyone, no matter who they supported, that Barack Obama must be our president.”
The AP-Yahoo News poll has surveyed the same nationally representative group of about 2,000 adults seven times since November, in an effort to understand how individuals are reacting to the presidential race. Nine in 10 Clinton supporters who said in June they were backing Obama were still with him in September, while three-quarters of those with McCain stayed with him.
As during her primary battle against Obama, Clinton supporters are likelier to be female, white and less educated than those who did not back her.
They trust Obama more than McCain on important issues, though not by as much as Democrats overall do. They prefer Obama over McCain on the economy by 30 percentage points, compared with Obama’s 50-point edge among all Democrats. They like Obama on Iraq by 17 points, while all Democrats give Obama a 40-point margin.
The starkest contrast comes from comparing Clinton backers still refusing to support Obama with other Democrats.
Just three in 10 Clinton supporters still not backing Obama view him favorably, compared with eight in 10 of all Democrats. While most Democrats and former Clinton supporters strongly prefer Obama over McCain to handle key issues, those Clinton voters still opposing Obama opt for McCain: On the economy by 32 points, and on Iraq by 47 points.
One in four Clinton backers say they’ve not yet locked into a candidate – and far more of those supporting Obama than McCain say they support their candidate strongly. Many who have already decided to back Obama say the transition wasn’t difficult.
Kathy McVeigh, 60, a nurse from Norwalk, Ohio, has moved from Clinton to Obama and said she would tell wavering Clinton voters “to get on the bandwagon because we need change, we better do something in a hurry because we’re going down the tubes.”
The AP-Yahoo News poll of 1,740 adults was conducted Sept. 5-15 and has an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. It included interviews with 502 people who in AP-Yahoo News polls in January and April identified themselves as supporting Clinton in one or both of those months, for whom the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4.4 points.
The survey was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.
In contrast, the Pew and ABC-Post polls relied on people saying in September whether they supported Clinton earlier this year. Those polls were conducted by telephone; some studies have shown people can be less reluctant to disclose embarrassing behavior – like not supporting their party’s presidential nominee – in an online survey than to a live telephone interviewer.
On the other hand, people in the AP-Yahoo News poll who backed Clinton in earlier waves of the survey might not want to appear inconsistent by suddenly backing a candidate – Obama – they opposed earlier.
I voted for Clinton in the primary, as I thought (and still do) that she would make the best President out of all the candidates, Democratic, Republican, Liberterian, or otherwise. I even donated $$$ on several occasions to her campaign. I was a strong Clinton supporter.
I now strongly support Senator Obama for President because I think he is the best candidate, Democratic, Republican, Independent or otherwise. In my view, policy positions trump likability every time.
Xman,
Do you honestly think those threats are going to work? If Obama loses, the Democratic Party is as dead as the dodo in 2012.
When every issue’s going your way and you still lose, then you certainly won’t win after the Republicans have returned to the good graces of the American people with more tax cuts and wars. And please don’t blame it on Palin’s “genius.” You guys are just no good at politics. Maybe you should spare yourself the humilation of pretending you’re an opposition party of any significance. Disband and join the Whigs in political Tartarus. Let the Greens and Libertarians have a go at the GOP.
Obama’s and Palin’s experience levels are equivalent? No.
Obama: Years as a community organizer, first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend twelve years as a constitutional law professor, spend eight years as a state senator representing a district with more than 750,000 people, become chairman of his state senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, spend four years as a US Senator representing a state of thirteen million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment, and Public Works and Veteran Affairs committees.
Palin: local weatherman, four years on the city council, six years as mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, twenty months as governor of a state with 650,000 people.
And, if someone wants us to have faith that they can be the “leader of the free world,” then they *should* be someone elite (meaning “the best”) and have a confidence that will come across to some as “arrogant.” Running for president, is, by definition, arrogant, IMO.
It’s interesting: If you were watching any of the coverage of both Obama and McCain talking about the economy yesterday, they sounded identical. It was as if the same scriptwriter crafted both of their speeches. So where is the difference? Besides some minor disagreements on tax policy (and they are really minor in the grand scheme of things) they are pretty much taking their playbook from the same page in terms of their ideas about ‘fixing’ this current economic situation.
But really, that’s such a red herring: At this point the economy is not going to be solved by any one person. Anyone who believes that is woefully uninformed or beyond naive. The current economic troubles are not the result of one administration’s choices but years of unfettered growth and unregulated investment by the largest investment banking firms. If you want to blame someone look towards corporate managers and government officials who consistently take a short-term view over long. The current administration is setting up a holding company that will long be in existence and formulating economic policy well after anyone even remembers dumb-W set it up. The bureaucracy will be defining, shaping and running the economy for the next decade.
With that said, I’m a former Clinton supporter who cannot get behind Obama no matter how hard I try. If I were to vote purely on economic issues I might be able to, but his whole tepid support for gay people followed by his assumption that we’ll vote for him no matter what, has really left me at an impasse.
Hopefully I’ll get over it on election day and vote for him, since deep down I know it is the right thing to do. But he’s really made some mis-steps with us. With little or no effort to ameliorate the situation. This crazy ‘families and values tour’ is the best example. He’s pandering for social conservative votes while throwing gays and lesbians under his non-inclusive bus. How else do you explain his inclusion of a pro-prop 8 speaker on his tour (Douglas Kmiec). That to me speaks volumes about where Obama places us on his list of priorities and that is why it is so hard to cast my vote for him or put my support behind him.
I COMPLETELY disagree with you. I am a highly educated, Black male–someone who is supposed to be a perfect fit for the Obama demographic. Yet I did not support him in the primaries and I don’t support him now. It is not fair to say that just because someone does not want to support Obama means they are racist. Yes there are alot of racist people out there–enough to swing the election to McCain. But to generalize Clinton supporters as racist is totally unfair.
Obama is simply not qualified to be President. In fact, he is no more qualified than Sarah Palin is to be President. Obama is arrogant–if he wanted true party unity, he would have picked Senator Clinton as his running mate. Now, he is on the verge of losing the election.
I’m no fan of Obama or Clinton, but the simple fact is Obama shot himself in the foot by not choosing Clinton as his running mate. Maybe it is petty of former Clinton supporters to not endorse Obama for whatever reasons they may have, but if you want to assign blame, start at the top. It was a stupid move on his part.
i can’t believe some of these clinton supporters! this is all sour grapes. get over your loss & get out there & support YOUR ticket.1 reason obama chose the “pro women’s rights” biden was to appeal to these voters. hillary was quoting rove in the primaries & with the whole assassination comment she made,who can blame him for picking someone warmer & more real? the clintons are too self-absorbed to put up with another 8-16 years. the clintons didn’t produce any coattails while they were in office. they gave us the repub congress in ‘94. clinton values helped sink gore in 2000. if it wasn’t for bill & monica, he would have had a more decisive victory over bush/cheney. so now the clintons whining about the primaries are now screwing up another democrat trying to get into the oval office. if obama loses,i won’t ever vote for hillary in any election. it’s exactly like Xman said.
OBAMA DOES NOT HAVE THE SAME VALUES AS CLONTON. I supported Clinton. I don’t think I can vote for Obama, and I WON’T vote for McCain. Clinton matched my values – universal health care, gay rights, abortion rights, separation of church and state. Obama does not. He does not support UHC, he won’t say NO to DOMA and DADT, he has gone religious on abortion, and he is an evangelical kissing up to the right wing evangelistas. I will NEVER vote for an evangelical, or a homophobe, or a misogynist. I’m either writing in, or going with a third party.
If so called Clinton Supporters are going to be so needless and not give a rat’s A* about the state of the economy and what’s going on because they have a gut feeling and vote for someone who is totally opposite than Clinton was and Obama has the same ideal’s as Clinton did but there going with McShame, thats racist at its finest. Explain to me how you would vote for Clinton but than switch because she was elected; to someone who was a total opposite? if OBAMA loses because of the crap; you don’t think we wont remember in 4 years…you wont get it…and I guarantee and so will all Obama supports that they will throw another republican in office after McShame…