Taking A Look At The Numbers - Up to June 19th, 2008

Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama

Numbers are in showing a slight lead for Barack Obama over John McCain.

Senator McCain has to hone his messaging to create a brand that sticks with the voters, Republicans, Independents and Conservative Democrats alike. He needs to focus his personal narrative, taking to his strengths, refusing to allow himself to be boxed in by the Democrats who are trying to reset his image so that Senator Obama can have the market cornered on change.

By Citizen Correspondent Wyatt McIntyre

Date Posted: 06/19/08

Reader Rating:

So what's the next move? Well, the numbers keep coming and they can't be offering the desired results to Presumptive Republican nominee Arizona Senator John McCain. Despite having won the nomination some months before and beginning with an early lead, most of the national polls are showing that, in a neck and neck race, the GOP Contender is finding that he is slightly trailing Democratic challenger Illinois Senator Barack Obama in the race for the White House. CNN's poll of polls, consisting of those conducted by Gallup, Cook/RT Strategies, and ABC/The Washington Post, shows a five point spread, with Obama leading 46 to 41 with 13 percent undecided, Rasmussen's Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows a three point difference, Obama holding 45 percent to McCain's 42. And this, though counting them, doesn't begin to look closely at the individual states. Places like Tennessee that have since moved from a Safe Republican State to a Likely Republican State or Maine, which is showing a 22 percent lead for Senator Obama or Virginia, a traditionally Republican state that has shown a one point lead by the Illinois Senator over McCain.

Without a doubt there has to be consideration given to the fact that the Democratic Primary's have just recently ended and, rather than looking at two different candidates and essentially throwing the primary consideration behind one, the party has moved to the next stage of the campaign with one candidate and the party, by and large, coalescing around him. There he receives an obvious bump in the polls as he gears up to run the remainder of the race on a different playing field, seeking to engrain that lead as a permanent one.

But even taking that into account it can't be easily dismissed the excitement that the Illinois Senator brings to the race. A young, articulate, fresh face on the Washington scene, he has made a successful jump in order to use that new emergence on the national political scene to paint himself as the agent of change. That has energized a number of new voters to fall into line with him and his campaign, translating it all into support not just in the primary to come out as the unlikely dark horse of the race but in his White House run to give him a early lead in the polling.

The Arizona Senator has his work cut out for him if he hopes to put together a successful bid that ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. All considerations that have to be weighing on Senator McCain and his campaign at this point as they contemplate their next move and what should come next.

First off Senator McCain has to recognize that he gains an advantage over Senator Obama on the key issue of Offshore Drilling.