Poll reflects a rebound by Obama after flap
FROM NEWS WIRE SERVICES
Updated: 05/05/08 6:54 AM
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- Sen. Barack Obama shares a laugh with his daughter Malia before giving a campaign speech Sunday in Fort Wayne, Ind.
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama appears to have rebounded from some of the criticism caused by the controversy involving his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., according to a new public opinion poll.
Obama now leads the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, by 11 percentage points — 51 percent to 40 percent — according to the poll commissioned by CBS News and the New York Times.
The poll also showed that the other Democratic presidential contender, Hillary Rodham Clinton, would defeat McCain in November’s general election by a margin of 12 percentage points — 53 percent to 41 percent.
Among Democrats who have voted or who plan to vote in a Democratic primary election, Obama now leads Clinton by 12 percentage points — 50 percent to 38 percent. That is up from his 8-point lead in an earlier poll released a few days ago.
The new polling results were posted Sunday evening on a CBS News Web site and were scheduled for publication in today’s Times.
In the same poll, 49 percent of the voters surveyed said they thought removing the federal gasoline tax for the summer was a bad idea; 45 percent thought that it was a good idea.
The survey of 601 registered voters was conducted from Thursday through Saturday evening. The Times said the survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for all voters surveyed, and 6 points for voters who said they vote in Democratic primaries or caucuses.
In campaigning Sunday, the Associated Press reported from Indianapolis that Obama likened Clinton to President Bush for threatening to “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacks Israel, and Obama called Clinton’s gas tax holiday a gimmick as he tried to fend off her challenge ahead of two pivotal Democratic primaries.
Clinton, in turn, stood by both her comment on Iran and her tax proposal as she gave chase in Indiana and North Carolina to the front-runner for the nomination.
The competitors squabbled over the issues — one foreign, one domestic — from a short distance, first during separate appearances on Sunday news shows and then as they courted voters for Tuesday’s primaries.
“This is the final push,” Clinton told a cheering crowd of volunteer canvassers in Fort Wayne, emboldened by her Pennsylvania victory two weeks ago as well as polls that show her in a close race in Indiana and narrowing Obama’s lead in North Carolina.
A few hours later and a few miles away, Obama urged an audience of several thousand to vote for him. “I need help,” he said.
The Illinois senator hopes that victories this week will stop the bleeding from a difficult campaign stretch. Maneuvering for advantage and trying to put the controversy over his former pastor behind him, Obama sought Sunday to portray the New York senator as a political opportunist on both Iran and her proposed gas tax holiday.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama seized on an answer Clinton gave recently when asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons on her watch.
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said April 22 in an interview with ABC. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”
Obama said, “It’s not the language we need right now, and I think it’s language reflective of George Bush” akin to “bluster and saber-rattling.”
Turning up the heat on an issue closer to home, Obama called Clinton’s proposal for a gas tax holiday this summer a “classic Washington gimmick” that would not solve anything and would save only $28 for each person. He opposes the temporary suspension of the federal tax and argued that Clinton was pandering for votes.
Clinton dismissed the criticism and disputed Obama’s suggestions that she and McCain were the same because they both support a gas tax holiday.
“Sen. McCain has said take off the gas tax, don’t pay for it, throw us further into deficit and debt. That is not what I’ve proposed,” Clinton said, adding that she wants the oil companies instead of consumers to pay the gas tax this summer.
Obama is ahead in the hunt for convention delegates — 1,742 1/2 to 1,607 1/2, according to an Associated Press count Sunday.
