Clarice Feldman has never seen anything like it.

Gallup finds that conservatives continue to outnumber liberals and moderates, and that growing numbers of Americans agree with conservative positions on many specific issues.

Get ready for 2010. We will be taking the country back.

Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009, confirming a finding that Gallup first noted in June. Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.
The 2009 data are based on 16 separate Gallup surveys conducted from January through September, encompassing more than 5,000 national adults per quarter.
Conservatives have been the dominant ideological group each quarter, with between 39% and 41% of Americans identifying themselves as either “very conservative” or “conservative.” Between 35% and 37% of Americans call themselves “moderate,” while the percentage calling themselves “very liberal” or “liberal” has consistently registered between 20% and 21%—making liberals the smallest of the three groups.

Even from across the Atlantic, the Telegraph has not failed to notice the terrible things happening to Barack Obama’s approval rating in the polls.

The decline in Barack Obama’s popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.

Gallup recorded an average daily approval rating of 53 per cent for Mr Obama for the third quarter of the year, a sharp drop from the 62 per cent he recorded from April.

His current approval rating – hovering just above the level that would make re-election an uphill struggle – is close to the bottom for newly-elected president. Mr Obama entered the White House with a soaring 78 per cent approval rating. ...

Jeffrey Jones of Gallup explained: “The dominant political focus for Obama in the third quarter was the push for health care reform, including his nationally televised address to Congress in early September.

“Obama hoped that Congress would vote on health care legislation before its August recess, but that goal was missed, and some members of Congress faced angry constituents at town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. Meanwhile, unemployment continued to climb near 10 per cent.” ...

Mr Obama is also facing widespread criticism for his drawn-out decision-making process over what to do next in Afghanistan.

Trying to nationalize health care during Clinton’s first term cost the democrat party a 40 year old Congressional majority in both houses. At times like these, one is obliged to quote Santayana, who observed that those who cannot learn from history are inevitably obliged to repeat it.

At least according to a poll conducted by Daily Kos.

Politico:

Shocker poll from Kos/Research2000 today.

A whopping 58 percent of Republicans either think Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US (28 percent) or aren’t sure (30 percent). A mere 42 percent think he was.

Count me among the 30% Not sure.

I think he was probably born in Hawaii. But, who knows? Very serious money was spent on court cases in a large number of states in order to avoid releasing more records.

William Voegeli, in the Claremont Review of Books, contemplates the conservative prospect after electoral disaster.

He notes that lost elections have previously been claimed to mark conservatism’s final defeat very prematurely. The difference this time seems to be a vacuum in our national leadership and a new accommodationist internal (Brooks, Frum, Douthat) movement urging conservatives to concede on liberal positions and scuttle toward the center in hope of finding a majority.

Voegeli disagrees, arguing that we should nail our colors to the mast; and, like Whittaker Chambers, resolve to stand upon the side of truth and liberty however adverse their prospects.

One measure of its strength is that conservatism’s policy victories often engender conservatives’ political defeats. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 paved the way for Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, in the same way that the success of the surge in Iraq in 2007 took the war off the front page in 2008, and made it impossible for John McCain to gain electoral traction as its chief advocate. The tax reduction and simplification achieved by the tax reforms of 1986 cleared the canvas for liberals to immediately begin advocating new increases and complexities. Even as the memory of the great crime wave from 1960 through 1994 has been effaced by the expectation of safe streets over the past 15 years, liberal activists and writers are laying the groundwork for a campaign against America’s “scandalously” high incarceration rates. Their “logic” is that safe streets have rendered full prisons unnecessary-rather than full prisons having rendered safe streets possible.

In short, America’s political division of labor finds conservatives cleaning up liberals’ messes, and liberals sweeping into the newly tidy spaces to start making new messes. If that’s true, what is to be done? ....

The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from its disposition to deplete rather than replenish the capital required for self-government. Entitlement programs overextend not only financial but political capital. They proffer new “rights,” goad people to demand and expand those rights aggressively, and disdain truth in advertising about the nature or scope of the new debts and obligations those rights will engender. The experiment in self-government requires the cultivation, against the grain of a democratic age, of the virtues of self-reliance, patience, sacrifice, and restraint. The people who have this moral and social capital understand and accept that there “will be many long periods when you put more into your institutions than you get out,” according to David Brooks. Instead, liberalism promotes snarling but unrugged individualism, combining an absolute right “to the lifestyle of one’s choice (regardless of the social cost) with an equally fundamental right to be supported at state expense,” as the Manhattan Institute’s Fred Siegel once described it. Finally, the capital bestowed by vigilance against all enemies, foreign and domestic, is squandered when liberals insist on approaching street gangs, illegal immigrants, and terrorist regimes in the hopeful belief that, to quote the political scientist Joseph Cropsey, “trust edifies and absolute trust edifies absolutely.”

Conservatives have no guarantees that they will be able to save the American experiment from those who cavalierly dissipate the capital required to sustain it. They can only struggle to prudently reconcile the experiment’s deepest needs with the exigencies posed by today’s circumstances and threats. If that reconciliation ultimately requires nothing short of morally disgusting compromises that give up basic principles, the conservative will, instead, cheerfully commit to doing his duty for the duration, fully expecting to die on the losing side.

Read the whole thing.

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But a recent Gallup Poll shows we still outnumber liberals and our numbers are growing.

40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004.

Rasmussen Poll:

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of U.S. voters nationwide favor a military response to eliminate North Korea’s missile launching capability. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 15% of voters oppose a military response.

Even liberal blowhard editorialist Frank Rich is warning that the Obama Administration (two whole months into office) may have already reached the point where it can permanently lose the public’s confidence and trust.

It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.”

Meanwhile, recent polls show that Republican support among independent voters has pulled even with democrats’.

You won’t read about it in the Times or the Post, but the Wall Street Journal’s Douglas E. Schoen and Scott Rasmussen are reporting that Obama’s approval numbers, though still in the black at present, 50 days into the Honeymoon period, are decidedly lower than those of other presidents over the last century at the same point in their administrations, and Obama’s numbers are sinking.

Meanwhile, polls, including the liberal Gallup, also demonstrate a growing lack of confidence in Obama’s economic policies and growing opposition to federal bailouts.

[A] solid majority opposes the bank bailout, and 20% think it was a good idea. A majority believes that Mr. Obama will not be able to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term.

Only less than a quarter of Americans believe that the federal government truly reflects the will of the people. Almost half disagree with the idea that no one can earn a living or live “an American life” without protection and empowerment by the government, while only one-third agree.

Despite the economic stimulus that Congress just passed and the budget and financial and mortgage bailouts that Congress is now debating, just 19% of voters believe that Congress has passed any significant legislation to improve their lives.

President Obama’s honeymoon is beginning to fade.

Members of Congress and old political hands say he needs to show substantial progress reviving the economy soon. ...

While lawmakers debate controversial proposals contained in the new president’s debut budget — cutting farm subsidies, raising taxes on charitable contributions, etc. — there is a growing sense that time is running out faster than expected.

Democrats from states racked by recession say Obama needs to produce an uptick by August or face unpleasant consequences. Others say that there is more time, but that voters need to see improvement by the middle of next year.

The most optimistic say Obama and Democrats in Congress will face a political backlash unless the economy improves by Election Day 2010.

“We’ve got to see an uptick by August or the Democratic majority is in jeopardy,” said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose state had an 11.6 percent unemployment rate in January. ...

But Obama must move quickly, he added, saying, “By summer there is no more honeymoon. Period.”

Other Democrats and some Republicans question whether Obama’s attention is too thinly spread — whether his economic message may be diminished by forays into healthcare, education and energy reform.

“I think any political honeymoon has a short life, and in this economic climate it’s dictated by the public’s perception of hope for the economy,” said former Democratic Sen. Richard Bryan, who represented Nevada for 12 years.

Army Times:

When asked how they feel about President-elect Barack Obama as commander in chief, six out of 10 active-duty service members say they are uncertain or pessimistic, according to a Military Times survey.

In follow-up interviews, respondents expressed concerns about Obama’s lack of military service and experience leading men and women in uniform.

“Being that the Marine Corps can be sent anywhere in the world with the snap of his fingers, nobody has confidence in this guy as commander in chief,” said one lance corporal who asked not to be identified.

Hat tip to Maggie Gallagher.

Zogby’s latest:

Is McCain making a move? The three-day average holds steady, but McCain outpolled Obama today, 48% to 47%. He is beginning to cut into Obama’s lead among independents, is now leading among blue collar voters, has strengthened his lead among investors and among men, and is walloping Obama among NASCAR voters. Joe the Plumber may get his license after all. “Obama’s lead among women declined, and it looks like it is occurring because McCain is solidifying the support of conservative women, which is something we saw last time McCain picked up in the polls. If McCain has a good day tomorrow, we will eliminate Obama’s good day three days ago, and we could really see some tightening in this rolling average. But for now, hold on.”

Dirty Harry celebrates McCain’s 48-47 Friday poll lead:

Come gather ’round liberals
Wherever you roam
And admit Obama’s sitter’s
Named Bernadine Dohrn
And accept it that soon
You’ll have to find solace in online porn
For ole’ Mac is back
And so’s Palin
And you better stop hatin’
Or you’ll die all alone
Yes, the polls they are a-closin’.

Come reporters and startlets
Who prophesize like old hens
Who keep your minds closed
And spew lies from your pens
And you spoke too soon
With your unholy spin
And there’s no turning back
Your reputation’s flamin’.
That ole’ war hero now
Might pull out a win
For the polls they are a-closin’.

Read the whole thing.

A typical Republican

Even the Washington Post notices:

Now the good news for Republicans: You are happier than Democrats. You always have been, and you probably always will be.

Never mind that your presidential candidate is sinking in the polls while your president plumbs historic depths of popular scorn and your free market squeals for intervention while your investments evaporate on Wall Street. You are not just happier than the other guys, but more of you are very happy indeed, according to new survey results published yesterday by the Pew Research Center.

The pollsters were in the field asking about happiness this month, a period when economic news was gloomy for everybody and presidential campaign news seemed especially baleful for Republicans. Yet they found 37 percent of Republicans are “very happy,” compared with 25 percent of Democrats; 51 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Democrats are “pretty happy”; and 9 percent of Republicans are “not too happy,” compared with 20 percent of Democrats.
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The partisan happiness gap—unbroken for nearly four decades—is impervious to electoral ups and downs. It has something to do with worldview. ...

Brooks says a lot hinges on the answer to this question: Do you believe that hard work and perseverance can overcome disadvantages? Conservatives are more likely to say yes.

Pew found that Democrats are more likely to say that success in life is mostly determined by outside forces. Republicans lean toward thinking that success is determined by one’s own efforts.

The hypothesis: Those who think they can control their destinies are happier.

Read the whole thing.

Polls conducted by the liberal media keep putting Obama decisively in the lead and awarding him a victory in every debate. There’s no accident here, and the process is the opposite of objective. Whether it’s CNN or Daily Kos doing the polling, the fix is in.

Zombietime is beginning to wonder if the “Obama is winning by a landslide” propaganda blitz could possibly have a downside.

It’s no longer a matter of dispute that the mainstream media, overall, very strongly leans to the left. Over 90% of journalists classify themselves politically as “liberal” to varying degrees, and innumerable instances of left-wing bias on the part of the media have been pointed out by bloggers over the years. Yes, a small subset of media outlets are identifiably conservative, but they are vastly outnumbered, both in sheer numbers and in influence, by the liberal media. This fact takes on intense importance in an era when the “news” becomes (as it has become) a subjective matter. Nearly any fact or incident can be “spun” to Obama’s benefit.

Obama’s supporters and his official campaign have taken great advantage of this felicitous informational landscape—first, that the meta-campaign trumps reality, and second, that the media is cooperative and complicit. For example, after presidential debates, the leading left-wing blogs always coordinate massive online opinion-poll-stuffing campaigns. After the Palin-Biden vice-presidential debate, the overwhelming consensus on conservative and centrist blogs was that Palin had won handily, and that Biden spoke mostly in a soporific monotone while spewing a continuous stream of easily debunked falsehoods. And yet readers of DailyKos, the Huffington Post, Democratic Underground and dozens of other top left-wing blogs swarmed en masse to vote (often repeatedly) in mainstream online polls about the debate, so that afterward, CNN (among many others) could run headlines that said “57% Think Biden Won Debate,” basing their conclusion on the results of the online polls. And once enough of these articles get published, then they themselves become “proof” of the debate’s supposed outcome, and before long (often just a matter of hours) it becomes a “fact” no longer up for discussion that Biden won the debate. This fact is then referenced by pundits, and slips into supposedly neutral news stories. ...

The Obama campaign itself also takes advantage of the sympathetic media to construct a facade of inevitability. The campaign will stage-manage crowds and dictate camera angles so that Obama is seen to not only have overwhelming numbers of fans but the correct demographic proportion of fans; the campaign will coordinate Obama appearances to coincide with rock concerts or other festivals so they can point to the huge crowds who showed up to watch Obama; and the media plays right along.

McCain supporters often complain about this strategy by the Left, going to great pains to point out the poll stuffing, the deceptive photos, the crowd overestimation, the slanted media coverage, and so forth. But should conservatives be so concerned? I propose that McCain supporters should be GLAD this is happening—because the Left is in fact making a disastrous strategic blunder.

A substantial portion of the Left’s strategy during this campaign is to create the perception that as many people as possible are supporting Obama. They strive to not simply show that he has a lot of supporters (which, obviously, he has), but to purposely inflate or exaggerate the numbers in order to make his support seem larger than it really is. The drive to do this seems almost automatic; it is assumed by Obama’s supporters to be the most effective campaign strategy. It’s so automatic that they perhaps are no longer even aware that it is a strategy. But why? What purpose is possibly served by this behavior? Has anyone on the Left ever paused, stepped back, and asked, “Wait a minute—why are we doing this? Are we sure it’s the correct course of action?” Doing everything possible to inflate the perceived support of Democratic candidates has become so de rigueur that the Left has long ago forgotten why they’re even doing it. ...

Now, it could very well be that, after all is said and done, Obama will indeed win this election—I can’t predict the future any better than can anyone else. The Obama campaign and its supporters are also engaging in many other strategies (unrelated to the exaggeration of his popularity) that have likely been effective—such as blanketing the airwaves with advertisements, disparaging McCain, insulting Palin, and so on. The unabashed and unapologetic Obama boosterism from the traditional media certainly isn’t hurting either. In prior elections, candidates worried about an “October Surprise,” some last-minute revelation or scandal that threatens to realign the entire race. But in 2008, two or three October Surprises seem to be cropping up every single day, and there’s no reliable way to predict what will happen next (other than that the media will try to emphasize the anti-McCain news and downplay the anti-Obama news). And it may be that less than 50% of the population was ever interested in voting for McCain in the first place, and that an Obama victory was a foregone conclusion long before the campaign even began; I simply don’t know. However, if Obama does win, it will be IN SPITE OF the counter-productive antics of his supporters, not because of them. I feel that all the exaggerations and bias polling and online poll-stuffing and comment-spamming have only served to increase a desperate come-from-behind energy in the McCain campaign, and induce a sense of complacency and inevitable victory among rank-and-file Obama voters. However: If McCain wins, then Obama’s supporters will only have themselves to blame.

Will the exaggerations become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as assumed, or are Obama supporters spinning further and further away from reality, constructing one unsupportable exaggeration on top of another—only to be stunned on election day when the actual results, once again, don’t match either their pre-vote opinion polling or their post-vote exit polling?

Yet it may very well be that an army of glum, dispirited and pessimistic conservatives will reluctantly trudge to the polls on November 4, each one imagining they are the only remaining person in the entire country voting for McCain, and lo and behold—they’ll turn out to be a silent majority after all.

Read the whole thing.

Rasmussen Reports finds Congress breaking new ground in voter unpopularity.

If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 59% of voters would like to throw them all out and start over again. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 17% would vote to keep the current legislators in office.

The framers missed the boat when they overlooked establishing a suitable procedure.

D.J. Drummond, at Wizbang, explains Obama’s miraculous recovery in Gallup’s Polls.

Obama’s support goes up and down, but the Liberal and Moderate Democrat support for Obama has been steady all of September. Odd, isn’t it? And support for Obama among Conservative Democrats went down four points in the last week, even though his overall support is supposed to have gone up four points. How to figure that?

Perhaps it’s in the Independents. ...

Hmmm, again. Obama gained support among Independents in the last month, but he actually lost two points among Independents in the last week. So that 4 point gain overall is still a mystery.

Nothing to do, then, but look at the Republicans. It would really be something if he’s improving support from GOP voters:

Ouch. Obama lost six points among Liberal and Moderate Republicans in the past week.

Conservative Republican support for Obama …

No change there in the past week.

Taken altogether, there is no group of political identification where Obama’s support has increased in the past week. Mathematically, therefore, there is only one way in which Gallup could show an increase in Obama’s overall support, when none of the party identification groups showed improvement for him.

Before I explain that possibility, I want to look at John McCain’s support by specific party identification groups. The man, according to Gallup, lost four points of overall support in the past week,

Conservative Republican support for McCain…

Interesting. McCain’s support among Conservative Republicans went up a point in the last week.

Wow, McCain’s support from Liberal and Moderate Republicans climbed by seven points in the past week, and yet we are told his overall support fell by four points? That is very odd, wouldn’t you say? It must have been the Independents, perhaps?

Independent support for McCain …

Stranger and stranger, McCain’s support among Independents went up by four points in the past week, just as his support from Republicans increased, yet we are told his overall support went down by four. Very hard to explain that using the math most of us learned in school, isn’t it? Well, there’s just one place left to look. Maybe somehow McCain used to have significant support among Democrats, but lost it? Let’s find out:

Conservative Democrat support for McCain …

Hmpf. Once again, a group where support for McCain went up (3%), but the overall says he went down.

Moderate Democrat support for McCain …

Steady there, so that one does not explain it.

Liberal Democrat support for McCain…

It’s only a point, but again we see McCain’s numbers in this group went up.

So, put it all together, and in the past week Obama has stayed steady or lost support in every party identification group, yet Gallup says his overall support went up four points. And McCain stayed steady or went up in every party identification group, yet we are supposed to accept the claim that his overall support went down by four points? Anyone have an answer for how that is even possible?

Well, actually I do. There is one, and only one, possible way that such a thing can happen mathematically. And that way, is that Gallup made major changes to the political affiliation weighting from the last week to now. Gallup has significantly increased the proportional weight of Democrat response and reduced the weight of Republican response.

Read the whole thing.

McCain winning Independent voters by 52-37% margin.

Gallup

Palin Nomination Impacts Obama Campaign

USATODAY:

In the new poll, taken Friday through Sunday, McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote.

Before the convention, Republicans by 47%-39% were less enthusiastic than usual about voting. Now, they are more enthusiastic by 60%-24%, a sweeping change that narrows a key Democratic advantage. Democrats report being more enthusiastic by 67%-19%.

The latest Zogby Poll puts McCain-Palin ahead 49.7% to 45.9%. Looks like the liberal democrat ticket is beginning to describe their traditional Fall trajectory.

New Rasmussen Poll:

Palin is viewed favorably by 58% of American voters.

51% of Americans believe that most reporters are trying to hurt Palin’s campaign.

The Palin pick has also improved perceptions of John McCain. A week ago, just before he introduced his running mate, just 42% of Republicans had a Very Favorable opinion of their party’s nominee. That figure jumped to 54% by this Friday morning. Among unaffiliated voters, favorable opinions of McCain have increased by eleven percentage points in a week—from 54% before the Palin announcement to 65% today.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of all voters now believe that McCain made the right choice when he picked Palin to be his running mate.

With the media passionately on his side, the lame duck Bush Administration about as popular as the proverbial skunk at a picnic, and all signs promising a Battle of the Little Big Horn experience for the GOP in November, Barack Obama ought to be holding a commanding lead in the polls, but recent numbers indicate a dead heat.

Uh oh! The topic du jour among the chattering classes is just how fed up with listening to the media’s harp-accompanied chorus of hallelujahs for Barack Obama Americans have become.

Not a good sign, is it?

As the democrat convention nears, we begin to hear faintly, but growing gradually louder, the theme from Jaws.

Walter Shapiro, in Salon:

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press diagnosed a new malady Wednesday: “Obama Fatigue.” That was the headline on a national survey conducted late last week that discovered that 48 percent of all voters and, tellingly, 51 percent of independents feel they have been “hearing too much” about Barack Obama. In contrast, only 10 percent of voters say they have been “hearing too little” about the de facto Democratic nominee.

“I was stunned by the numbers, since I didn’t expect that we’d get that kind of gap,” Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center, said in an interview. Kohut, a respected pollster who rarely traffics in hyperbole, added, “I would have taken it far less seriously if we didn’t get the exact opposite result with the McCain question.” More voters (38 percent) complain that they have been hearing “too little” about John McCain than “too much” (26 percent).

This poll question, which has never before been asked about presidential candidates, is more intriguing than definitive.

Lower in the water and tipping toward the starboard

Alex Castellanos, at HuffPo, admires Obama’s luck, but notes that he does have grave vulnerabilities.

Grave enough that, despite Ted Stevens and a triumphant European vacation, Obama’s sinking poll numbers are making headlines.

The best campaign against Barack Obama is not being run by his opponent, but by Barack Obama. It is Obama’s campaign that presents their candidate as an ever-changing work-in-progress. It is his own campaign that occludes our ability to know this man, depicting him as authentic as a pair of designer jeans.

To earn the Democratic nomination, as Fred Thompson points out, Obama ran as George McGovern without the experience, a left-of-center politician who would meet unconditionally with Iran, pull us precipitously out of Iraq, prohibit new drilling for oil, and grow big government in Washington by all but a trillion dollars. In his general election TV ad debut, however, Obama pirouetted like Baryshnikov. With a commercial Mike Huckabee could have run in a Republican primary, Obama now emphasizes his commitment to strong families and heartland values, “Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses.” In this yet unwritten chapter of his next autobiography, Obama tells us he is the candidate of “welfare to work” who supports our troops and “cut taxes for working families.” The shift in his political personae has been startling. Obama has moved right so far and so fast, he could end up McCain’s Vice-Presidential pick.

General-election Obama now billboards his doubts about affirmative action. He has embraced the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption saying, “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…everything.” He tells his party “Democrats are not for a bigger government.” Oil drilling is a consideration. His FISA vote and abandonment of public campaign finance introduce us to an Obama of recent invention. And as he abandons his old identity for the new, breeding disenchantment among his formerly passionate left-of-center supporters and, equally, doubts among the center he courts, he risks becoming nothing at all, a candidate who is everything and nothing in the same moment.

I guess that European coronation backfired. The latest Zogby poll shows McCain slightly in the lead.

A national Associated TV/Zogby International telephone poll of 1,011 likely voters conducted July 31-Aug. 1 finds Republican Sen. John McCain taking a razor-thin 42%-41% lead over Democrat Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the U.S. presidency.

The margin between the candidates is statistically insignificant, but demonstrates a notable turn-around from the Reuters/Zogby poll of July 7-9 that showed Obama ahead, 46%-36% in a four-way match-up that included Libertarian candidate Bob Barr of Georgia and liberal independent candidate Ralph Nader. McCain made significant gains at Obama’s expense among some of what had been Obama’s strongest demographic groups. For example:

McCain gained 20% and Obama lost 16% among voters ages 18-29. Obama still leads that group, 49%-38%.

Among women, McCain closed 10 points on Obama, who still leads by a 43%-38% margin.

Obama has lost what was an 11% lead among Independents. He and McCain are now tied.

Obama had some slippage among Democrats, dropping from 83% to 74%.

Obama’s support among single voters dropped by 19%, and he now leads McCain, 51%-37%.

Even with African-Americans and Hispanics, Obama shows smaller margins.

The survey results come as Obama, fresh off what had been characterized as a triumphant tour of the Middle East and Europe, including a speech to 200,000 Germans in Berlin. That trip quickly became fodder for an aggressive response ad by the McCain campaign that questioned whether Obama’s popularity around the world meant he was ready to lead the U.S.

An LA Times political blog reports that Obama’s numbers have been plummeting. According to the Gallup Poll, last Sunday Obama was enjoying a 49 to 40 lead over John McCain. By Wednesday, his advantage had declined to 45 – 44, a change of 9 points, making the race a statistical dead heat.

It’s really much too early for Obama to collapse. He hasn’t even been nominated yet.

Newsweek can’t figure out how Obama lost his mojo, and how the gap has narrowed so quickly.

The perceptible tone of disappointment and chagrin peeking through the facade of objective journalism is delightful. How can this possibly be happening?

A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama’s glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month’s NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.

Obama’s overall decline from the last NEWSWEEK Poll, published June 20, is hard to explain. ...

At the time of the last poll, pundits also noted that a large lead in the polls doesn’t always guarantee a general-election victory. Many warned that Democrat Michael Dukakis led George H.W. Bush by as much as 16 points in some 1988 polls and then went on to lose that year’s presidential contest.

But perhaps most puzzling is how McCain could have gained traction in the past month. ...

Despite Obama’s precipitous decline, the poll suggests underlying strengths for the Dem.

Meanwhile visiting Dublin to receive an honorary degree from Trinity College, aging cinema idol Robert Redford told the Irish Times that in his opinion the downfall of one more ultra-liberal presidential candidate could prove fatal to the democrat party.

I think Obama is not tall on experience . . . but I believe he’s a really good person. He’s smart. And he does represent what the country needs most now, which is change.

“I hope he’ll win. I think he will. If he doesn’t, you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye. I think we need new voices, new blood. We need to get a whole group out, get a new group in.”

Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results?

Don Surber points out that July poll advantages often melt away by November.

At this point in 2004, Democratic Sen. John Kerry had a 7-point lead in the Gallup while Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has a 2-point lead.

Oops.

The Gallup Poll looked at the last few elections and found that the leader in July won only 3 of the 9 contested races since 1948.

Presidents Dewey, Humphrey, Dukakis and Kerry had leads of 11, 5, 6 and 7, respectively, at this point in their races.

In fact, in July 2004, Kerry had a majority over the incumbent, 51-44. ...

Obama now leads Republican Sen. John McCain 46-44 in the Gallup.

Curiously, in 10 of the last 12 races, the Republican fared better in November than he polled in July. The two exceptions are President Clinton in 1992 and Vice President Al Gore in 2000.

Polls in July are nice to chat about around the pool while sipping iced tea (if you are a Democrat) or popping open a beer around the grill (if you are a Republican) or ignoring (if you are an independent).

Or fighting the malaria with a gin-and-tonic if you are a drunk.

Rasmussen reports:

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

t’s just a shame that there is no Republican leadership whatsoever out there to offer a meaningful alternative.

AFP reports a major study over six years including 50,000 interviews on three continents of Muslim attitudes by the Gallup organization establishes that 93% of Muslims are moderates who disapprove of the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 and other subsequent terrorist attacks. “Only seven percent of the billion Muslims surveyed—the radicals—condoned the attacks on the United States in 2001, the poll showed.”

Robert, at Jihad Watch, notes that 7% of 1.3 billion Muslims means that there are only 91 million Jihadists for us to worry about.

Atlanta Constitution reports Harris Poll results:

After officially declaring his candidacy, U.S. Senator Fred Thompson moves ahead of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. One-third (32%) of those who say they will vote in a Republican primary or caucus will vote for Thompson while 28 percent will vote for Giuliani. Much further back is John McCain, who continues his downward slide with 11 percent saying they would vote for the Arizona Senator, and 9 percent who say they would vote for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

The Zogby Poll finds George W. Bush is a trifle unpopular with a mere approval rating of 29%, but Congress is doing so much worse at 11% that one almost expects to see angry peasants with torches and pitchforks attacking the Capitol.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad probably has a higher public approval rating in the United States than the Reid/Pelosi Congress.

Daily Kos cites a poll of 1461 Iraqis taken by a “respected British marketing research firm” which proves the US is responsible for the violent deaths of more than a million Iraqis so far.

And Ray Drake, at Davids Medienkritik, cites German media reports of numbers of US anti-war demonstrators.

ARD Tagesschau, SZ and SPIEGEL ONLINE – “4,000 to 6,000” anti-war demonstrators
ZDF and Die Zeit – “About 10,000” anti-war demonstrators
TAZ – “Tens-of-thousands” of anti-war demonstrators
Die Welt – “50,000 anti-war demonstrators”
Die Presse (Austrian media site) – “Around 100,000 Americans marched against the war…”

Do I hear 200,000? 500,000? 1,000,000 anti-war demonstrators? Going once – going twice – sold!

Allahpundit is probably making too much out of all this. Rather than showing anything really substantive about democrats, this Zogby Poll probably merely demonstrates the insufficiently-often-recognized ability of the people commissioning polls to produce the results they desire by how they frame the questions.

Second edition of Iowahawk’s incarceree beauty contest.

Via Maggie’s Farm.

George W. Bush has a low approval rating, the latest Zogby Poll reports:

66 percent said Bush had done only a fair or poor job as president, with 34 percent ranking his performance as excellent or good.

But Congressional approval ratings have cratered, setting an all-time record low:

83 percent said Congress was doing a fair or poor job, just 14 percent rated it excellent or good.

The latest Gallup Poll finds

Congress Approval Down to 29%; Bush Approval Steady at 33%

David Broder, in today’s Washington Post, claims the left has a mandate for defeat, surrender, and withdrawal.

The gap between public opinion and Washington reality has rarely been wider than on the issue of the Iraq war. A clear national mandate is being blocked—for now—by constraints that make sense only in the short-term calculus of politics in this capital city.

The public verdict on the war is plain. Large majorities have come to believe that it was a mistake to go in, and equally large majorities want to begin the process of getting out. That is what the polls say; it is what the mail to Capitol Hill says; and it is what voters signaled when they put the Democrats back into control of Congress in November. ...

The question that naturally arises is why the strongly expressed judgment of the people—responding to news of increasing American casualties in a seemingly intractable sectarian conflict—cannot be translated into action in Washington. ...

One way or another, public opinion ultimately will be heeded on the war in Iraq. It is hard to imagine the Republicans going into the presidential election of 2008 with 150,000 American troops still taking heavy casualties in Iraq.

It’s true that the democrats won control of Congress last November, but many other issues and factors besides the war, and a number of Republican scandals, undoubtedly also played a role in that election’s results. The democrats gained a very narrow Congressional majority, and can hardly be described as possessing a mandate to do anything other than avoid taking bribes and molesting pages.

Which mandate alone should represent a more than adequate challenge, requiring all the moral resolve and political will the democrat party can possibly muster, if not more.

One hears the claim a lot these days that public opinion thinks this, and public opinion demands that, as if opinion polls conducted by news organizations represented some sort of meaningful, objective, binding, and official process. This sort of claim represents the grossest sort of attempt by journalists to usurp political authority.

The poll Mr. Broder cites in his own editorial was conducted by two notoriously biased news organizations, the Washington Post and ABC News. And its results are based on the responses of a mere 1082 adults, including an intentional “oversample of African-Americans.”

Opinion polls of 1000 or so of the people willing to talk to pollsters on the phone prove basically nothing. Opinion polls are typically artfully crafted. The questions they contain steer answers in the direction their creators desire.

That WaPo/ABC poll, which Broder cited, asked:

Do you think (the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there, even if that means continued U.S. military casualties); OR, do you think (the United States should withdraw its military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further U.S. military casualties, even if that means civil order is not restored there)?

But if I asked instead:

Do you think (the United States should abandon the civilian population of Iraq to Islamic Fundamentalism and sectarian violence, if that means destroying our future credibility in the eyes of both our friends and our adversaries abroad): OR, do you think (the United States should keep its word and implant stable and democratic government in Iraq, even at the cost of US military casualties)?

the poll results would be quite different.

Mr. Broder’s polls never can produce anything resembling a mandate. They only represent propaganda, typically created by dishonest and dishonorable advocates.

The only opinion polls which count occur officially and in November. The last election was inconclusive, as are the war’s current results.

Members of the left and its allies in the punditocracy looking for a mandate for surrender, withdrawal, and defeat need to look for it in the results of the 2008 election, and stop claiming that they already possess it.

James Lileks reports surprising evidence of vertebrate life in Europe.

As surveys go, its results were rather surprising: A majority of Europeans would support deterring Iran’s nuclear program by military force. It’s not quite as drastic as Quakers demanding plowshares be converted to swords, but it’s close.

We’re not looking at a large, clamorous, martial majority, though — 52 percent approved of military action. Eight percent had no opinion, possibly because they were busy packing for the state-mandated three-month vacation and didn’t want to be bothered.

Forty percent disagreed that Iran should be deterred by military means, and frankly, that seems low. The European spirit, bled white by two ghastly, self-inflicted bloodbaths, has settled into the warm, milky bath of passive decline. One gets the sense that most Europeans would disapprove of military action to fight off alien invaders. Hey, everyone has a colonial phase. Who are we to point fingers, let alone guns?

Read the whole thing.

The poll was conducted by the think tank Open Europe.

And was reported here, in Macedonia. Somehow I missed reading about this one in the Times or Post.

Right Wing News emailed more than 240 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to answer 8 questions. The results below were based on 63 responses.

We here at NYM were not invited to participate, but we won’t let that stop us.

1) Do you think the surge should go forward?

Yes (61)—97%
No (2)—3%

Yes

2) Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)—84%
No (10)—16%

Yes

3) Do you believe that the wall on the border will ever actually be completed?

Yes (6)—10%
No (56)—90%

No

4) Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?

Yes (0)—0%
No (59)—100%

No

On the following four questions, bloggers were asked to select one of the options presented (because some bloggers skipped particular questions, gave answers that weren’t listed, or gave answers that were difficult to categorize, there are not 63 responses to every question.)

5) Illegal Immigration.

A) Would you prefer an illegal immigration bill that tackled border security and enforcement issues only? (46)—77%

B) Would you prefer a comprehensive bill that tackled border security and enforcement issues, created a legal status for the people who are here illegally, created a guest worker program, and increased the number of foreigners allowed to become American citizens? (14)—23%

B – I disagree with much of the Right on illegal immigration. I think the problem is with the fact that we have immigration laws and policies which conflict with our labor needs, so we don’t really want to enforce them. We want cheap labor which is not available domestically, but we also don’t want to let those foreigners in. It’s just the usual American “wanting it both ways” problem.

6) Which of the following Democratic candidates do you think would be the toughest opponent for a Republican candidate in 2008?

A) Hillary Clinton (38)—63%

B) John Edwards (9)—15%

C) Barack Obama (13)—22%

A – Not that I think Hillary is all that tough to beat, if we only had a worthwhile candidate ourselves.

7) If you were grading George Bush on his foreign policy for his presidency so far, would you give him an:

A or B (35)—56%
C (18)—29%
D, E, or F (10)—16%

D – Did not invade Syria or Iran. Failed to democratize Iraq properly by a serious occupation over a significant period of time before granting any form of home rule. Has not invaded Venezuela or Cuba.

8 ) If you were grading George Bush on his domestic policy for his presidency so far, would you give him an:

A or B (17)—27%
C (26)—41%
D, E, or F (20)—32%

C- – His tax cuts were good but not great, but he certainly did manage to turn the economy around very quickly. He is guilty, however, of the devastatingly disastrous failure to put the country on a wartime footing, and to prosecute domestic activities undermining National Security, the war effort, and American morale, thus losing public support.

And have been recently been equating some opinion polls showing high percentages of opposition to the War in Iraq with an electoral mandate.

Let’s see how they like this poll by Public Opinion Strategies (POS).

reported by New Media Journal:

57% of those polled agreed with the statement, “I support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for their people.”..

57% of those polled believed that Iraq was central to the War on Terrorism and our struggle against global Islamofascist aggression…

53% believe the Democrats are going too far in pressing the president to withdraw troops.

56% believe that even if they harbor concerns about the president’s policies that Americans should stand behind the president in Iraq because we are at war.

59% believe that it would hurt American prestige more to pull out of Iraq immediately than it would to stay there for the long term, until the job was finished successfully.

and the New York Post:

53 percent to 43 percent… believe victory in Iraq over the insurgents is still possible…

Only 25 percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement, “I don’t really care what happens in Iraq after the U.S. leaves, I just want the troops brought home.” Seventy-four percent disagreed…

When given a choice of four policies, an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops was the least popular (17 percent).