This is trouble. He didn't get a significant bounce after winning the nomination and despite the media slobbering all over him he hasn't gotten a bounce from this trip.
FOX News Poll: No Bounce for Obama From Overseas TripThursday, July 24, 2008
By Dana Blanton
The significant news coverage Barack Obama is receiving on his foreign trip has not translated into a bounce in his numbers, a just-released FOX News poll shows. Obama now holds the slimmest possible edge over John McCain, leading by just 41 percent - 40 percent in a head-to-head contest. In fact, Obama’s support is down slightly from his 45 percent - 41 percent advantage last month.
Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from July 22 to July 23. During that time Obama was traveling in Jordan, Israel and Palestinian territories. In the days before the poll was taken Obama had been touring Afghanistan and Iraq. The poll has a 3-point error margin.
Among independents, Obama has a narrow 2 percentage point edge: 34 percent to McCain’s 32 percent, and 34 percent undecided.
McCain has more strength of support from his party faithful. Fully 86 percent of Republicans back McCain compared to 75 percent of Democrats that back Obama.
Given that the independent vote splits about evenly, one might expect McCain’s strength in Republican support would give him an advantage overall. The reason that fails to happen is that the pool of Republican voters is smaller than the pool of Democratic voters, which means McCain’s party-based edge has less impact on the race than it might otherwise. In this poll 42 percent of voters identify as Democrat and 33 percent Republican, and that’s about where the party identification numbers have been all year.
"It seems increasingly clear that this race will come down to which candidate can better appeal to the roughly one-third of independent voters who remain undecided," says Ernie Paicopolos, a principal of Opinion Dynamics.
McCain’s support declines a little when third party candidates are included, even though Libertarian Bob Barr receives less than 1 percent and independent Ralph Nader receives only 2 percent, Obama’s advantage goes to 3 percentage points (40 percent to 37 percent). Another 17 percent are undecided.
More voters say they would be “enthusiastic” if Obama (23 percent) were to become the next president than if McCain does (13 percent). On the other hand, more also say they would be “scared” if Obama wins (19 percent) than if McCain wins (14 percent).
Overall, about equal numbers would have a positive reaction (enthusiastic or pleased) if either Obama (45 percent) or McCain (41 percent) were elected.
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390301,00.html
