Amerikaanse Presidentsverkiezingen #62 Closing Arguments

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November 2, 2008 -- Updated 0229 GMT (1029 HKT)

Palin costing McCain, poll suggests

NEW: McCain would do better if vice presidential vote was separate, poll suggests

NEW: Fifty-three percent say Palin doesn't agree with them on important issues

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new national poll suggests Sarah Palin may be hurting Republican presidential nominee John McCain more than she's helping him.

Fifty-seven percent of likely voters say Sarah Palin does not have the personal qualities a president should have. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Sunday indicates McCain's running mate is growing less popular among voters and may be costing him a few crucial percentage points in the race for the White House.

Fifty-seven percent of likely voters questioned in the poll said Palin does not have the personal qualities a president should have. That's up 8 points since September.

Fifty-three percent say she does not agree with them on important issues. That's also higher than September.

"Just after the GOP convention in early September, 53 percent said they would vote for Palin over Joe Biden if there were a separate vote for vice president. Now, Biden would beat Palin by 12 points if the running mates were chosen in a separate vote," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

And what if voters were allowed to vote for president separately?

"It would be a 4-point edge for Barack Obama, 52 percent to 48 percent. Since the McCain-Palin ticket is currently getting 46 percent in a match-up against the Obama-Biden ticket, it looks like Palin's presence on the GOP ballot is taking 2 percentage points away from McCain. In a close race, that might represent the margin of victory," Holland said.

The unfavorable numbers for Palin, Alaska's governor, also have been growing. They are 8 points higher in the current poll than in early October, and they're twice as high as they were when McCain announced his running mate in late August.

John McCain has also been suspect with conservatives, the base of the Republican Party, and they were never enthusiastic about his candidacy. Palin was a unusual pick. She was well known with conservative insiders but unknown outside. When she was named, there was a rush of enthusiasm among conservatives and everyone was impressed by McCain's unusual and unexpected choice," said Bill Schneider, CNN's senior political analyst .

"The more many Americans have found out about Palin, the less they like her."

Meanwhile, the poll also suggests Americans may not be as concerned as McCain about one-party rule if Obama is elected president.

One of McCain's closing arguments has been that the Democrats are poised to increase their majorities in Congress, and that Obama -- the Democratic presidential nominee -- is "working out the details" with Democratic leaders to raise taxes, increase spending and "concede defeat in Iraq."

But in the poll, 50 percent of likely voters said if Obama wins the White House, Congress should be controlled by Democrats, with 48 percent saying it should be controlled by Republicans.

Fifty-nine percent said if McCain wins the presidential election, Congress should be controlled by Democrats, with 39 percent saying Republicans should control it.

Democrats currently have a 235 to 199 majority in the House of Representatives and a 51 to 49 majority in the Senate -- the chamber's two independent senators are allied with the Democrats.

One of Obama's closing points is that McCain would carry out George Bush's policies if elected, saying the Arizona senator has "ridden shotgun" with the president on economic policy.

The poll suggests that 53 percent think McCain would mostly carry out Bush's policies, with 45 percent saying he would not.

Only 28 percent approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president.

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Electoral Math: For McCain, the Numbers Aren't Adding Up

Barack Obama will win more than 270 electoral votes on Tuesday, giving him the White House. Hours before voting starts, John McCain has no clear path to reaching that same goal.

In fact, based on interviews with political strategists in both parties, election analysts and advisers to both presidential campaigns - including a detailed look at public and private polling data - an Obama victory with well over 300 electoral votes is a more likely outcome than a McCain victory.

Under the Electoral College system, a candidate wins all of a state's electoral votes as long as he or she achieves a popular vote victory of any margin. Obama's commanding position results from the fact that he holds seemingly impregnable popular vote leads in twenty-four states, plus the District of Columbia, with 291 electoral votes, more than he needs to win. Obama's geographic anchors are the northeast, the mid-Atlantic, the upper industrial Midwest and the west coast, all areas that Democratic presidential candidates have dominated for several election cycles. But he is encroaching on other states as well that have recently been gone dependably Republican, including Nevada, Virginia and Colorado.

With his superior spending, better organization on the ground, and poll standing, in fact, Obama actually seems poised to win the majority of the remaining toss-up states. If there is a pro-Democratic/anti-Bush wave cresting, as some top strategists in both parties believe, Obama could take all of the still contested battlegrounds, giving him nearly 400 electoral votes, and a significant multi-regional mandate. The remaining toss-up states are all large ones - Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri - with a total of 84 electoral votes, and were all won by Bush in 2000 and 2004. And some additional western and southern states that are currently leaning towards McCain (such as North Dakota and Georgia) could end up in the Democratic column, lifting Obama over 400.

McCain's challenge - and only hope - is to find a way to get just over 270 votes, starting with pulling back into the Republican column some states that appear to be titling clearly towards Obama. Then he needs to sweep the toss-ups, where in almost every case polling shows him behind. Right now, McCain leads solidly or more narrowly in 21 states with 163 electoral votes.

McCain's most likely victory scenario is to hold nearly all of the states that George W. Bush won in 2004. The Republican's strategists have claimed for several days that they are closing their gaps in many of the traditionally Republican states to within striking distance. Actually overtaking Obama in enough states to win would require a combination of factors: Obama's get-out-the-vote efforts have to turn out to be weaker than thought; young voters have to fail to channel their enthusiasm for Obama into actually voting; race has to be a bigger factor than most pollsters currently believe it to be; conservatives have to be more fired up than they have seemed; independents have to be more attracted to the Republican ticket than they have been all year; and, most of all, late-deciding voters have to break disproportionately to McCain.

If all that happened - improbable at this point - McCain could get to 270 by losing all the states Democrat John Kerry won in 2004, but holding all the Bush states plus two, from a group that includes Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada.

McCain's other path would be to win Pennsylvania - where public polls have shown Obama with a healthy lead, but where Republicans have invested a lot of resources. That would allow McCain to squeak to victory, even if he lost Virginia, as long as he won one of the four states above. McCain's Sunday night visit to New Hampshire also suggests Republicans see a glimmer of hope in a state that has just four electoral votes, but where Obama has pulled to a big lead in polls.