A new survey by USA TODAY/Gallup finds that President Obama is the man Americans admired most in 2009, and finds Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are virtually tied as the most-admired woman.The close finish by Clinton, named by 16% in the open-ended survey, and Palin, named by 15%, reflects the nation's partisan divide. Clinton was cited by nearly 3 in 10 Democrats but only 6% of Republicans, Palin by a third of Republicans but less than 1% of Democrats. Obama dominates the field among men at 30%, though his support also shows a partisan split. He was named by more than half of Democrats but just 7% of Republicans.

A new poll reports that while U.S. voters like Secretary of State  Condoleezza Rice better than her designated successor, Hillary Clinton, most are confident that Clinton is up to the task of being America’s chief diplomat: "62% are at least somewhat confident in Clinton’s ability to address the international challenges facing our nation in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip. 34% are Very Confident . . . 15%, however, are not at all confident of Clinton’s abilities to deal with these issues."

American voters like what they're seeing with regard to President-Elect Obama's transition efforts. According to a new  USA Today/Gallup Poll, Obama gets soaring marks for his handling of the transition and his choices for the Cabinet . . . even at a time the public is downbeat over the economy. More than three of four Americans, including a majority of Republicans, approve of the job Obama has done so far — broad-based support he'll need as he faces tough decisions ahead." The public also has a very positive opinion of the new president's cabinet appointments--by 69%-25%, they approve of his pick of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State; by an even wider margin, 80%-14%, they approve of his decision to reappoint President Bush's Pentagon chief, Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

CBS News Election and Survey Unit's analysis of exit polls in last weeks elections concludes that Hillary Clinton would have beaten McCain by a wider margin than Obama: "As voters left the polls on Election Day, many were asked how they would have voted if the election match-up were between Hillary Clinton and John McCain rather than Barack Obama and McCain. 52 percent said they would have backed the former Democratic candidate; 41 percent would have voted for McCain, wider than Obama’s 7-point margin over McCain. Interestingly, 16 percent of McCain voters said they would have voted for Clinton, the Democrat, if she had been her party’s nominee." While this conclusion is, of course, hypothetical--it's hard to predict how any candidate would do in the heat of a hard fought campaign--the piece examines the makeup of voters who now say thay would have supported Clinton instead of the Republican candidate.

During the closely fought Democratic primaries and caucuses, a growing and thunderous chorus of Obama supporters (mostly male, by PollTrack's count) called for Hillary Clinton to withdraw from the race. One problem: throughout the latter races, Clinton trailed Obama by just a few hundred delegates at most. And, so, the contest continued to the bitter end, early June. At the time, many Obama supporters felt the hard fought contest would hurt Obama in the fall. In the end, it turned out to be a great asset, allowing him to insulate himself against potential negatives, such as the candidate's association with the Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, and others. Once aired, and adeptly handled by the Obama campaign, these factors were neutralized to a certain extent for the fall campaign. More important, the long primary season allowed the Obama campaign to build deep and formidable on-the-ground operations in virtually all of the battleground states. As contributions flowed in--indeed, the heated match between the two Democratic challengers fired up their respective bases--Obama built a powerful fund raising and voter turnout database. The icing on the cake: after the "bruising" primary fight ended, Obama was able to attract the lion's share of Clinton supporters on 4 November. Obama pollster Joel Benenson, in Time magazine, notes the campaign never believed it would have trouble winning back supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton. Said Benenson: "The notion that voters who supported Senator Clinton would vote Republican in the general election was never supported by what we saw in our polling. At the beginning of June, going into the general election, Obama had a double-digit lead in our battleground poll against McCain among women. He was competitive among Catholics and led 2 to 1 among Latinos. The press corps had focused on all these groups in the last three months of the primary and was convinced that they would pose problems for us in the general. But that just wasn't true, and we recognized that early on. As a result, we were able to focus on swing voters instead of worrying about parts of the base that were already with us. We looked at groups where Obama could make gains and at places where he could broaden the map."

With several new polls showing the race in Pennsylvania drawing closer, the question of the day is why. Rasmussen this morning reports on the narrowing trajectory over the past month: the latest "survey of voters in the state shows Obama with 51% of the vote while McCain picks up 47%. That four-point advantage for Obama is down from a seven-point margin earlier in the week and a 13-point advantage for Obama earlier in the month." First it is important to note that the Democrat does lead, has held this advantage for more than a month, and passes the 50% threshold. The competitiveness of the race, however, may relate to the state's demographics, which tend to be evenly divided among Democrat- and Republican-leaning voters (the old joke about PA: it's New York in the big cities at either end of the state; Alabama in the middle). Kerry won the state very narrowly four years ago. The state has one of the oldest populations in the nation (+65 voters tend to favor McCain), a large and politically active bloc of gun owners, and a large contingent of conservative, working class white voters. Even among Democratic primary voters in April--who trended considerably more progressive than the statewide electorate at large--Hillary Clinton defeated Obama by nearly a +10% margin. Indeed, during the fall campaign, PA has been the one Kerry/Gore blue State that has given Obama the most trouble. PollTrack was the first polling website to note Obama's problem in the state, writing on 11 September: "With three new polls all showing the race in Pennsylvania drawing down to a statistical tie --Obama now leads by an average of just over 2%--PollTrack moves the state on Today's Map from 'Leaning Democrat' to 'Too Close to Call.' It is quite possible that the RNC and Palin are helping McCain in the more conservative middle section of the state--an area rich in small towns, Evangelical and Christian conservative voters, and gun owners." (NOTE: the previous passage is a quotation from PollTrack's post in early September: PA remains "Safe Democrat" as of 1 November and until further evaluation on Today's and Tomorrow's Map) If Pennsylvania, and its unique demographics, represents an isolated example of a narrowing race, Obama may hold enough of a structural advantage in the electoral college to win handily on Tuesday. But if PA is a harbinger of a broader national pattern--say, for example, indicating a tendency of white working class and Reagan Democrats to vote for McCain, whether they are admitting this to pollsters or not--certain statewide contests could draw closer as well, particularly Ohio and Missouri.

President Bush's approval rating has dropped to an all-time low, according to Gallup: "Before the U.S. House of Representatives voted down a proposed financial rescue plan endorsed by the Bush administration, just 27% of Americans said they approved of the job George W. Bush is doing as president, the lowest of his presidency and already down 4 points since the financial crisis intensified." To what extent, PollTrack wonders, is this decline, coupled with the voters' tendency in recent surveys to blame Republicans in general for the present economic crisis, contributing to McCain's declining polling numbers? Over the next month, will it be possible for McCain to transcend the negative standing of his party? Is his fate inexorably linked to the success or failure--or the public perception thereof--of the bailout package and its economic aftermath? Interestingly, while McCain's numbers have drawn back to pre-convention levels--and Obama's are up accordingly--the Democrat still does not break the 50% mark in most national polls. PollTrack observes that there remains a undertow of resistance to Obama in the electorate at large. This inability to seal the deal with the American voter may be due to a number of factors--including uncertainty about the candidate's experience, his inability to lock up support from working class and so-called Reagan Democrats (thus, McCain's leads in OH, TN, WV, and KY) and die hard Hillary Clinton supporters, overt or unconscious racism, or the perception that the Democrat is somehow "foreign" or "out of touch" with middle American values. Will the nation's economic implosion help Obama to seal the deal or will McCain retake the momentum?

In a bit of news that seems antithetical to Obama's improving poll numbers, a statewide poll released yesterday by Middle Tennessee State University reports that Democrat is still having a problem winning over voters who supported Hillary Clinton in Tennessee's primary back in February. If the election remains close, this "Clinton gap" could spell trouble for the Democrat. MTSU observes: "The McCain campaign seems to have had modest success at attracting supporters of former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, whom 22 percent of Tennesseans say they voted for in the Democratic primary. A quarter of those who voted for the junior senator from New York in Tennessee’s Democratic presidential primary say that they would now vote for McCain and Palin in the general election. However, 56 percent of those who report that they voted for Clinton in the primary say that they would now vote for Obama and Biden. The rest of Clinton’s supporters remain undecided at this point or say they would vote for someone other than McCain or Obama." Overall, McCain's PollTrack average in the state is a healthy +14%.

An Associated Press-Yahoo News survey released today reports that Barack Obama's support from former backers of Hillary Clinton "is stuck smack where it was in June . . . a stunning lack of progress that is weakening him with fellow Democrats in the close presidential race." The poll indicates 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."

Yesterday, a rush of statewide surveys resulted in a changed Today's Map. What are the implications of Indiana going from red to gray, Minnesota from blue to gray? One important observation: it looks like the national divisions of 2000 and 2004 are still around. With the exception of usually true-red Indiana (PollTrack still believes the state will eventually trend back to the Republicans), the same swing states are drawning down to a tie. (And, yes, despite the fact that no Democrat has won the state's electoral votes since LBJ in 1964, Virginia is now a swing state: it has actually grown bluer in recent years. Consider the 2006 senate race, where Democrat James Webb defeated Republican George Allen by a mere 8,000 votes.) PollTrack suspects that these divisions may be sharpened by the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates. McCain has been able to solidify the Republican base, take the lion's share of the very dependable (re: voter turnout) 65+ demographic, and appeal to independents. Obama does well with urban voters, young people, African-Americans, and Hispanic voters. The problem for both: they each appeal to the same constituent demographics as Gore and Bush, Bush and Kerry, leaving a slim pool of swing voters (married suburban women, for example) to essentially break the tie. PollTrack suggests that other factors--preeminently Obama's race, women disaffected by the Obama campaign's handling of Hillary Clinton, McCain's age, and Palin's  religious conservatism--are making it difficult for either candidate to eat into the other's base or to pick off large segments of independent and unaffiliated voters.

A CNN poll conducted entirely after Obama's naming of Biden as his running mate shows the race a dead heat, at 47%-47%. The survey, which indicates that McCain has gained ground since July, also suggests that the naming of Biden has failed to quell the concerns of some Clinton supporters. As the CNN's polling directer notes, “The number of Clinton Democrats who say they would vote for McCain has gone up 11 points since June, enough to account for most although not all of the support McCain has gained in that time.” 

Yet, it may be too soon to tell if this trend will hold. For one, the Obama campaign plans to use the Democratic National Convention to unify the party and heal wounds left over from the primaries. Perhaps as important is the unreliability of "flash polls"--surveys completed during or immediately after an important event or news story in question. Such polling gauges the effects of the incident or event in question on voter sentiment--in this case the nomination of Biden--over a highly compressed time period. Thus, the reaction time of voters may be insufficient for public opinion to be fully formed.

In a survey conducted yesterday and published this morning, Rasmussen Reports finds that 39% of voters believe that Obama made the right choice in selecting Biden as his running mate; 25% disagreed and another 35% are not sure. Women were less enthusiastic than men of the pick—33% of women say Biden was the right choice while 27% disagreed. It appears from these limited and early numbers that Biden may not resolve Obama's problem with Hillary  Clinton's most ardent female supporters.

In another flash poll completed yesterday by Gallup, the numbers suggest that the new VP nominee may have little effect on most voters: only 14% say that the selection of Biden makes them more likely to support Obama. 7% say less likely; 72% replied that it will have no effect at all.

A word of caution: it may take weeks or even months to understand the full effect of a VP pick. And most often, the VP candidate has only a modest effect, at best, on the outcome of a presidential election. In 1988, for example, Democrat Michael Dukakis lost with a running mate considered strong by most observers, Sen. Lloyd Bentson (D-Texas); his opponent Republican George H. W. Bush won, even though his choice, Sen. Dan Quayle (R-Indiana), was widely perceived as weak and inexperienced.

Well, it's Sen. Joe Biden (D-DEL). The immediate question: how will his selection as Obama's running mate impact on their standing in the polls and electorally? For one, PollTrack will now move Delaware from ""likely Democrat" to "safe Democrat."

Beyond this, the implications of Biden's role on the ticket are unclear electorally. There is no one swing state that Biden can help lock in for Obama (as LBJ did for JFK in Texas in 1960, and Kaine or Bayh might have accomplished in this cycle, with Virginia or Indiana respectively). His experience, of course, could help with voters concerned about Obama's inexperience, a serious problem for him at the moment (see below, "Tightening Race: Crisis Management").

The big hurdle that Obama now faces, however--one that accounts to a great extent for the closeness of the race--is that McCain has unified his party and Obama has not. Will selecting Biden help bring disgruntled Clinton supporters into the fold, for example?  This seems unlikely right now.  And, of course, the VP selection rarely significantly alters the dynamics of an election.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll suggests that Hillary Clinton's supporters are sharply divided in their support for Barack Obama. While the poll directors conclude that “Whatever momentum that Obama took into the summer, he really appears to have lost it,” they attribute this erosion to the candidate's failure to unify his party, in contrast to McCain.

More troubling for Obama, perhaps, are the numbers concerning voters who supported Clinton in the primaries and caucuses: according to the survey, 52% now say they will vote for Obama, 21% are backing McCain, and 27% percent are undecided or want to vote for someone else. As the NBC/WSJ points out, voters who supported Clinton in the primaries — but do not now back Obama--"tend to view McCain in a better light than Obama and have more confidence in McCain’s ability to be commander-in-chief."

Though the NBC/WSJ numbers in contrast to other recent polls suggest a somewhat higher percentage of Clinton voters who refuse to support Obama, the implications for him in all of these surveys are dire. Thus, a major question looms about party unity: will the Democratic National Convention be enough--with speeches from both Clintons and a night devoted to women's issues--or must the Obama campaign go one step further and nominate Hillary Clinton for Vice President?

Two new polls out to day suggest that the McCain campaign may have gained momentum over the past few weeks. According to the Zogby/Reuters survey, McCain leads Obama among likely voters by 46% to 41% percent, erasing Obama's 7% advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll. The George Washington University Battleground Poll, also published today, gives McCain a more modest 1% lead.

One problem for Obama: recent polls indicate that while McCain has solidified the Republican base, Obama has not. On average, as many as a quarter of Democrats now say they will vote for the Republican or an Independent candidate or not vote at all. The problem becomes more serious among the Democrats who supported Clinton in the primaries: as many as one third in some polls report that they will not support Obama. It will be interesting to track Democratic voter support for Obama in light of the upcoming Democratic National Convention,perhaps an opportunity to help bring the party together?