McCain-Palin campaign lead pollster, Bill McInturff, and Director of Strategy, Sarah Simmons, conducted a conference call this morning in response to the ABC News/Washington Post poll released today showing Barack Obama opening up a 52 percent to 43 percent lead over John McCain. McInturff sees the national numbers very differently, arguing the race overall and in the battleground states is relatively stable--particularly when many polls are averaged. Even looking at just the last week, an average of the public polling suggests the campaign is within the margin of error, and has basically been that way for the month of September.
McInturff believes the ABC News/Washington Post poll is clearly an outlier. He reminded listeners that survey samples are within the margin of error 95 percent of the time; 5 percent of polls are just out of whack. This is one of those, he said. McInturff argues the 16-point Democratic party ID advantage in the poll is the root of the problem. There is no evidence of a party ID shift that would justify that much of a Democratic edge. He said this survey reminded him of a Los Angeles Times survey conducted in June that similarly overestimated the percent of Democrats in the electorate. This poll is also out of line with additional polls McInturff says his company (Public Opinion Strategies) conducts every night for other political campaign clients.
A couple other points:McInturff said he hopes Republicans see only a 4 to 8 point party ID disadvantage on exit polls on by Election Day. He believes McCain can win, even with that level of party ID disadvantage in exit polls. If it gets much worse that 8 points, it's going to be a bad night for John McCain.
He said the "economy popped by 10 points in the last week" as a salient issue among voters, undoubtedly due to the Wall Street crisis.
Simmons was asked about Missouri, and she said the campaign feels good about the state and is doing well with suburban women, a key constituency.
Simmons also commented on the lack of attention the McCain field operation receives. She said despite all the vaunted history surrounding the Bush-Cheney field effort in 2004--and its storied ability to find every last Republican in every state--the McCain campaign made more calls last week than did the Bush/Cheney campaign during the same week in 2004.
