By Laura Meckler and Jonathan Weisman, The Wall Street Journal
Sen. Barack Obama enters Election Day with a solid, though narrowing, lead over Sen. John McCain as both men sprint to the finish line of their long presidential race.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds the Democrat with an eight-percentage-point advantage, down from the 10-point edge he held last week. The Republican was still hoping he could gain further traction in the campaign’s closing hours with now-familiar charges that Obama is too liberal and not ready for the job.
Obama’s lead, reflected in other national and battleground state polls as well, has been in place since September, when the financial crisis reset the presidential contest. McCain’s advisers were gunning for a come-from-behind victory, noting that he did it before to capture the Republican nomination.
The new Wall Street Journal poll, conducted Saturday and Sunday, found 51% of likely voters favored Obama, versus 43% who favored McCain. Six percent remained undecided, with a third of those saying they were leaning toward a third-party candidate. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
“The poll shows some slight movement for McCain. But with just 48 hours left, it’s going to be a challenge to make up the rest of the difference,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster who conducts the survey with Democrat Peter D. Hart.
“This poll has all the earmarkings of an electorate that has reached an opinion that Barack Obama would be a good president,” Mr. Hart said. “The uncertainties [about Obama] that were so prevalent early in the year have just melted away.”
WASHINGTON — More good news for Barack Obama hours before he and Republican John McCain debate: A lot more people think Obama has done a better job than McCain explaining his views on the economy, according to a new Pew Research Center poll.
The survey, released Wednesday, found that 48 percent think Obama has done an excellent or good job explaining his economic views. There’s some sobering news, though, for the Illinois senator, as roughly the same percentage think he has done a fair or poor job.
Still, those are better numbers than McCain’s. The survey, conducted Oct. 9-12, found 29 percent thought McCain has done an excellent or good job in explaining his approach to the crisis, while two-thirds thought he has done a fair or poor job.
Pew found there’s no doubt the economy is by far the dominant issue 20 days before the election.
But, it also found, “there is little indication that the nation’s financial crisis has triggered public panic or despair. Most Americans express confidence that the government still possesses the power to fix the economy, though that belief has lost adherents since July. There has been no decline in people’s perceptions of their own financial situations.
“Looking ahead to next year, Americans are more confident than they were in July about an improvement in the national economy and in their own personal finances.”
Nonetheless, there’s worry. Pew found that over the last three weeks, as markets have reeled and major financial institutions have seen huge problems, “there have been sharp increases in the percentages saying they plan to rein in spending in a number of areas.”
And for the first time in a Pew survey, more Americans say that “people should learn to live with less,” rather than that “there are no limits to growth in this country.”
Obama is benefitting; he now has a 50-40 percent lead over McCain, and, Pew said, “a greater share of (Obama’s) supporters back him strongly.
In blistering remarks to a Saturday morning rally here, former Robert F. Kennedy aide Bartle Bull embraced Republican John McCain for president, hurled Barack Obama under the bus, and then backed it slowly over the Democratic nominee.
“America needs a president who is grounded in patriotism, not drowning in ambition,” Bull told a crowd of hundreds gathered in Lower Manhattan. “I have used that sentence many times in the last three months, and not once — never once — have I been asked which candidate is which.”
Former RFK aide Bartle Bull rallies for John McCain Saturday in Manhattan.
The lifelong activist and former Village Voice publisher presented his impeccable liberal-Democrat credentials.
“I had the privilege of serving as Robert F. Kennedy’s New York campaign manager when he ran for president in 1968,” Bull explained. “I was arrested as a civil-rights lawyer in Mississippi, and I campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment. But in honest conscience, I cannot support the Democratic ticket in this campaign.”
Bull aimed at his target and charged like a longhorn.
“Character in the White House should be more important than charisma on the campaign trail,” Bull declared. “Barack Obama does not want to ‘change’ America. Barack Obama wants a different country.”
Turning to Obama’s financial agenda, Bull minced no words.
“Obama’s notion of economic fairness is pure Karl Marx,” Bull said, “plus a pocketful of Chicago-style ‘community organization.’ ”
Bull derisively recalled “how the Obama campaign ridiculed John McCain for not being able to use a computer — an attempt to reference his age. Senator McCain cannot use a computer because the Vietnamese repeatedly broke his arm when he refused to renounce his country and his fellow prisoners.”
Bull then asked the gathered McCain fans, “Do you suppose that Obama, or talky Joe Biden, can land an A-4 at night on a flight deck of an aircraft carrier in heavy seas?”
Bull and six other speakers rallied voters at Manhattan’s Foley Square — one of six simultaneous events across the Empire State. The New York Veterans for McCain-Palin also hosted supporters of the GOP ticket in Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica.
Former U.S. Navy Seal Joe Femenia stumps for McCain-Palin.
Surrounded by the U.S. Courthouse, the Jacob Javits Federal Building, and other government facilities, John McCain and Sarah Palin’s backers waved flags, shook placards, and cheered applause lines deep in the heart of Obama Country. While they were hard-pressed to tip New York (or even the 10007 Zip Code) into McCain’s column, cameras from CBS, NBC, and Univision carried their message to places where McCain’s fortunes are brighter.
