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McCain May Be Stalling Even With GOP Stage To Himself
About Sam Stein
Sam Stein is a Political Reporter at the Huffington Post, based in Washington, D.C. Previously he has worked for Newsweek magazine, the New York Daily News and the investigative journalism group Center for Public Integrity. He has a masters from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a graduate of Dartmouth College. Sam can be reached at stein@huffingtonpost.com.
It has been more than seven weeks since John McCain officially secured the Republican presidential nomination -- a period in which the Arizona Republican has had the GOP stage all to himself, unburdened by rival candidates and aided by increasingly aggressive infighting between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Conventional wisdom suggests that, in those seven weeks, McCain has benefited from shrewd political steps (and convenient circumstance) in his effort to keep the White House in Republican hands. But has he? The data can tell two very different stories.
On the one hand, McCain's national poll numbers against his potential general election opponents have, remarkably, stayed static. On the other hand, he's seen gains in some key swing states.
On the one hand, the Arizonan has witnessed an up-tick in campaign fundraising. On the other hand, he still trails Clinton and Obama by approximately two-to-one and three-to-one margins respectively.
Reflecting this dichotomy, political observers have expressed mixed opinions as to whether McCain has taken full advantage of his general election head start, but a rough consensus is emerging: McCain finds himself in an unpredicted and fortuitous position, but he still lags in some key political measures, deficits that could prove damaging to his election prospects.
"I think that the McCain campaign has been incredibly fortunate, and in fact, as best as I can recall, what we are witnessing here in terms of the grace period is unprecedented," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican consultant. "I have concerns, primarily focused around fundraising. When you have Hillary Clinton who can raise ten million in 24 hours and everyone thinks she is not going to get the nomination and you have Barack Obama getting $40 million a month, John McCain raising $15 million is not in the same league. And at some juncture money is going to matter. At some juncture they are going to stop focusing on each other and the victor will focus on McCain, and you cannot discount the impact that money applied in key media markets will have in this race."
Even as McCain went four-for-four in primary victories on March 4 -- officially winning enough delegates to capture the presidential nomination -- his position within the Republican Party was hardly secure. In his victory in Ohio, he received less than 60 percent of the vote, even though the nomination by then was a foregone conclusion. Twenty-eight percent of Ohio Republicans said they would not be satisfied if McCain won the nomination. Texas was much the same, with McCain winning with only 51 percent of the vote, and 23 percent of the electorate saying they would not be satisfied if McCain earned the nomination.
Time, however, was on McCain's side, as the Democratic primary continued and his own intra-party battle had ended. But seven weeks later, the political landscape remains the same in many regards. A Cook/RT Strategies poll taken in the days after March 4 showed McCain with a two-point advantage in a hypothetical general election match-up against Clinton. A month and a half later, Clinton, according to a Newsweek poll, leads McCain by a three percent margin. That same Cook/RT Strategies poll had McCain, again, with a two-point lead in a general election match-up, against Barack Obama. In the Newsweek poll towards the end of April, Obama had jumped over McCain for a three-point advantage.
Not everyone in the GOP sees frustration in the polls, noting that other surveys provide different results and that, in the important swing states, McCain has made headway.
"He has definitely improved his status because he has gone from being behind Obama to being ahead or even," said John McLaughlin, president of the polling firm McLaughlin Associates. "And after Pennsylvania, I think it will be [even more pronounced]...That is a function of the landscape. McCain won his own primary with pluralities in a winner take all environment. But he didn't have the enthusiastic grassroots conservatives. What you will see now is that Republicans will be a lot more supportive."
Indeed, in Pennsylvania, a late March Quinnipiac poll had McCain losing to Clinton by an eight-point margin. A month later, that was reduced to five. Similarly, McCain has gained five points against Obama, turning a four-point deficit in late March into a one-point advantage. The Arizona Republican has made similar gains during the past month both in Ohio and Florida. But polling data in these swing states has not been conducted in weeks.
And yet, the Pennsylvania primary, in which McCain was - with the exception of Rep. Ron Paul and former governor Mike Huckabee - the only Republican on the ballot, delivered some depressing news for the senator. As Frank Rich, of the New York Times reported,"27 percent of Republican primary voters didn't just tell pollsters they would defect from their party's standard-bearer; they went to the polls, gas prices be damned, to vote against Mr. McCain."
With this data at had, what does McCain have to do between now and the time the Democrats ultimately settle on a nominee?
Steve Hayward, a fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, suggested that the senator's "semi-leisurely national tour" has proven politically shrewd: "I am sure he is getting good local exposure in all the places he is going, and it gives him more latitude later in the campaign." Moreover, Hayward said, McCain should refrain from going too far on the attack against either Democrat: "better to keep his powder dry for the summer and fall."
It is an assessment that Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University, agrees with.
"Senator McCain does not have to stay in the news mix to heal the party," Wayne said. "He should not get into the Democratic brawl at this point. He looks more presidential by not doing so. Besides, it is too soon to begin the general election. The public is getting fatigued by the long nomination process. 'Quiet' efforts at this point hold and extend the base without alienating his Independent and potential Democratic supporters."
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April 28, 2008 12:13 PM