John McCain has moved ahead of Barack Obama in today's Gallup tracking poll for his strongest lead since May, 48%-45%. A less noticed trend, though, is that McCain is also starting to make inroads into one of Obama's most important bases: the youth vote.
During the week of August 25-31 -- the same week the Democrats held their convention -- 54% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they supported Obama, while 37% said McCain. That might not seem like good news for the Arizona senator, but 54% is Obama's worst showing among that age group since early June, the last numbers Gallup makes available.
Youth support for Obama topped out at 65% in mid-July, but it's been falling since. But it's not all bad news for Obama: for the first time in the election, voters 65 and older favor Obama, albeit by a slip margin of 44% to 43% for McCain. McCain had led that age group by as many as 13% earlier in the summer.
Complete Gallup poll information, along with trending info for other demographics, can be found here.
1 comment:
Good job getting on one of the day's bigger stories and applying it to the youth vote. However, it would have been nice to have a little bit more analysis and know if political analysts think this is just a result of the RNC (similar to how Obama went up in the polls following the DNC), or if this is something for the Obama campaign to be concerned about. Also, think didn't work. :(
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