A USA Today/Gallup survey showed McCain ahead of Obama 50 percent to 46 percent among registered voters , a turnaround from a previous poll taken by the newspaper just before last week’s Republican National Convention.
That poll had McCain trailing Obama by seven percentage points.
Twenty-nine percent of the respondents said selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee had made them more likely to vote for McCain on November 4, and 21 percent said their vote in support of the Republican ticket was now less likely.
A separate Gallup daily tracking poll found McCain had moved into a 48 to 45 percent lead ahead of the November 4 election — his best performance since May.
Experts attributed the McCain rebound to his party’s convention and the surprise naming of Alaska governor Palin.
“He’s in a far better position than his people imagined he would be in at this point,” political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia was quoted by USA Today as saying.
McCain and Palin vowed to use their history of fighting corruption to shake up Washington at a series of campaign stops after the Republican National Convention.
“In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers, and then there are those like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change,” Palin told cheering crowds in Wisconsin.
The Illinois senator argued that voters would realize that the election was a choice between a new direction and discredited Republican policies.
“If they like what they’ve had over the last eight years, then they’ll go with McCain. And if they don’t like it, hopefully they’ll go with me,” he said.
Obama’s running mate Senator Joseph Biden called McCain’s commitment to change “malarkey.”
AFP
9/8/8
