This is really interesting. From today's release of the latest IBD/TIPP poll of likely voters [4]:
McCain has cut into Obama's lead for a second day and is now just 1.1 points behind. The spread was 3.7 Wednesday and 6.0 Tuesday. The Republican is making headway with middle- and working- class voters, and has surged 10 points in two days among those earning between $30,000 and $75,000. He has also gone from an 11-point deï¬cit to a 9-point lead among Catholics.
Now, as mentioned below, these polls are all over the place. This one, and the AP, show McCain down by one...while the major network polls have him down by double digits...(of course we all KNOW how reliable they usually are). In fact, the IBD/TIPP poll was the closest to the mark back in 2004.
Of course at this point, any poll is just a snap-shot, and comparing one to another doesn't always work, as they have different sampling methods, etc.. But what you can do is compare the same poll and its trends over time. And the big news in this poll is in bold print above. That being that McCain has gained among the "blue-collar" crowd, and has seen a twenty point swing among Catholics in this poll.
That's huge. And it probably speaks to a few things. 1) That perhaps a good bit of that gain among Catholics in attributable to their cross-categorization w/the blue collar crowd...and 2) the fact that, the closer we get, the more people start to give a hard focus to specific issues. And what do we know to be a big issue with Catholic voters? Abortion.
And when you consider that many Catholic Bishops have been speaking out big-time [5] about how Catholics shouldn't vote for pro-abortion politicians, it starts to make sense. Then remember that Catholics make up a larger percent of the vote in those swing states.
Maybe that's why McCain's bucking convention wisdom and continuing to campaign in Pennsylvania...and why PA Governor Ed Rendell has been asking the Obama campaign to make more swings through that state [6].
