Obama has 13-point Michigan lead over McCain

Momentum swings to Obama in almost every demographic
By TODD SPANGLER • FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF • September 25, 2008


A week of economic crisis in Washington and on Wall Street has been very, very good for Barack Obama – at least in Michigan.



The Detroit Free Press/Local 4 Michigan Poll shows the Democratic senator from Illinois with a commanding lead of 13 points over Republican John McCain in the presidential race. Obama’s lead of 51% to 38% in the poll is nearly double the edge he had a month ago in a Michigan Poll taken just before the Democratic convention in Denver.

The poll showed momentum swinging clearly to Obama in almost every demographic. Among women, his lead is now 54%-35% -- eight points better than it was a month ago, before the Democratic and Republican national conventions and McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. Among independents, Obama enjoys a 14-point lead.

As for what’s driving it – it’s the economy.

With the markets in distress, Washington policymakers scrambling to find a compromise bailout plan and taxpayers howling that they don’t want to be stuck with a $700 billion bill to help Wall Street financiers, Obama is reaping the benefit – so much so that Michigan could possibly be removed from the list of battlground states, even as the candidates have spent so much time in the state.

Asked who is best able to fix the problems with the U.S. economy, Obama did even better than the head-to-head with McCain, 52% to 37% among the 602 likely voters polled from Monday to Wednesday of this week by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa. Asked which candidate was more likely to fight for the concerns most important to you and your family, 56% of respondents said Obama, compared to 36% for McCain.

The poll – which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for the overall sample – showed that half of the respondents believe the economy is in a recession and 24% that it is already in a depression. That should come as no surprise to Michiganders, the state having the nation’s largest unemployment rate at 8.9% in August as automakers and related businesses struggle to find bottom amid layoffs and closings.

“Obama benefits when people think about what’s best for the economy,” said Ann Selzer, who conducted the poll for the Free Press and WDIV-TV Local 4.

‘It’s consistent with every poll over the last seven days,” said Lansing political consultant Craig Ruff, reacting to word that the Free Press poll would show Obama with a large lead.

He added that voters seem to be saying, “If experience has brought us this far, what do we have to lose?”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Obama leads by a large margin in Wayne County – but in the rest of metro Detroit, he has a lead of 52% to 38%. In fact, the polls showed Obama leading in every region of the state – except in the south-central part of Michigan, where the race is a statistical tie. That includes the western part of the state – where Obama leads 46-43% and where McCain led in August.

“The economy is one of the reasons I’m not voting Republican this year,” said 44-year-old Michael Carpenter, an entrepreneur in Grand Rapids. “I think we need a change in direction.”