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Obama’s edge over McCain remains fragile

An unpopular Republican president and a US economy in tailspin would seem to help clear a path to the White House for pending Democratic nominee Barack Obama, but pundits warned it is too early to rule out his Republican rival John McCain.

An average of polls by the independent Web site RealClearPolitics.com gives Obama little more than a 1 percent edge over McCain — 46.6 percent against 45.2 percent — in a national match-up.

Obama’s wings have been somewhat clipped by the grueling primary election saga, en route to locking up enough delegate support to claim the Democratic nomination this week, defeating US Senator Hillary Clinton.

Yet some experts, like political pundit Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, still say Democrats have a built-in advantage this year, despite the drawn-out nomination battle.

“There’s no question that this is a Democratic year, and sooner or later, that will manifest itself,” he said.

“You’d much rather be Barack Obama than McCain. McCain has [US President] George W. Bush, who is a disaster,” Sabato added, saying the Bush legacy would be difficult for any candidate to overcome.

“He has poisoned the well for all Republicans,” Sabato said. “The Iraq War is a disaster, the economy is a disaster. Gas prices, food prices — disasters.”

Eric Davis, professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, agreed that voters like the Democrats’ platform, but said that won’t tell the whole story during the campaign up to the Nov. 4 vote.

“Voters agree more with the issue positions that Obama and the Democrats are talking about, but in terms of candidate appeal McCain seems to have a greater candidate appeal,” he said.

“Obama needs to keep the election focused on the issues, both domestic and international, and McCain needs to keep the campaign focused on the issues of candidate experience and qualifications to be president,” Davis said.

The coming White House contest in November pits African-American Senator Obama — 46 years young and virtually unknown outside Chicago just four short years ago — against McCain, a 71-year old Vietnam War veteran and two-decade-long veteran of the US Senate.

The Republican presumptive nominee has earned a reputation as a straight-shooter with a wry sense of humor.

Micky Carroll, political analyst at Quinnipiac University, said there could be surprises in store in this year’s general election, which he said was unlikely to break along the same political fault lines as the last two presidential elections.

“McCain has attractions in places that Bush didn’t win” in 2000 and 2004, Carroll said.

“By the same token, Obama is going to pull in some votes” in places where 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry failed to win over voters, he said.

“You don’t know where young people are going to turn out, but you know where black people are, and he’s going to have some strength in some of the southern states that the Democrats couldn’t win,” he said.

Carroll said the two men were a fascinating study in contrasts.

“You have two new candidates: you’ve got a Republican, a bit of a maverick, with a real military history and a quite proud, personal history.

“You’ve got a Democrat who came out of nowhere, who has excited the entire younger generation,” he said.

“It’s going to be a new ballgame, and a very interesting one,” he said.

The fact that McCain is also from Bush’s Republican party is not a disqualifier in Carroll’s view.

“They know that Bush isn’t running, that John McCain is not Bush,” he said.

One key to winning the coming vote, as in past elections, will be to claim battleground states which are all but impossible to predict, because they are so narrowly divided.

Bush won the critically important state of Florida by some 500 votes against then-US vice president Al Gore in 2000.

McCain leads Obama according to polls in the state by about eight percentage points, thanks to Florida’s sizable population of veterans, Jews and elderly — groups where Obama has not been able to make sizable inroads so far.

Other key states like Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania remain undecided, despite what is perhaps a slight demographic edge for Democrats, but that could readily change, Sabato said.

“It might take a while — until after the conventions or until after the debates — but it’s going to happen,” he predicted.
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