This Week's Polls

The results are in, and it looks like we can make some judgments about how much the Jeremiah Wright revelations have had on Barack Obama's Presidential hopes. The answer appears to be "not much".

This week, Pollster.com put the race at 46.9 - 45.2 in Obama's favor, for a 1.7 percent difference. Last week, it was 1.8 percent. One thing that's noticeable about these numbers, though, is that they both are lower than the candidate's totals last week. It would be tempting to ascribe this to increased dissatisfaction with both candidates, but I don't think that's true. Most of this change appears to be due to the results of a Pew Research poll(PDF), which put the number of undecideds at 12 percent. I don't know why it's so high. Even among polls of registered voters, it's much higher than normal.

The Wright thing may have an effect on the campaign, but it's clearly not going to happen soon. I suspect it will be after Obama's won the nomination that most of the effect will be felt. That's when the rest of the TV news channels will wake up to their responsibilities to show us all the dirt on Obama. Meanwhile, Obama handled the issue pretty well, and I think at least with Democratic voters, it's mostly a non-issue at this point. Very few minds seem to have changed, based both on the polling data and on my observations of what's been written at political blogs. No one's admitted to an "aha!" moment that I can see.

More On The Pew Poll

That same Pew Research poll(PDF) also included questions about other issues, including whether the poll participants were satisfied with the way things are going in this country. The answer was that 22% were satisfied, and 72% were dissatisfied. The last time those numbers were similar was in 1995. The number of satisfied Americans has been declining, according to the poll, since April of 2003, when it was 50 percent.

Approval of how President Bush is doing his job has also never been lower. It's now at 28 percent.

It's definitely not Morning In America, anymore.