Favorability Update: McCain and Palin Continue to Slide

A couple of days ago I posted an article and chart showing the rapidly dropping favorability ratings of both John McCain and Sarah Palin, based on data from the Daily Kos / Research 2000 daily tracking poll. (See my comments on that post if you're going to try the "it's from DK so it can't be trusted" bit.)

I just updated my graph based on two more days of polling figures, and they show that the divergence between the Democrats' and the Republicans' favorables is continuing:



Again, these numbers are "net favorability" for each candidate, meaning, what percentage of those polled have a positive view of them, minus how many have a negative view.

As I surmised on the 15th, these numbers tend to be leading indicators for poll movements, and we are seeing those occur now. I would expect the McCain figures to bounce back; I think most of his hit here is due to his negative campaigning, and if he stops that, he should recover.

But frankly, despite Palin's net favorability now being negative, I think her figures have far more room to drop, at least in the short run. Simply put, more and more people are figuring out every day that she's a dishonest, power-hungry fraud -- and her continued cowardice in avoiding the media almost three weeks after selection makes people nervous about her competence.

There's Hope for Us After All: Americans *Do* Seem to Care About Honesty and Issues

Last week, DailyKos commissioned a poll with Research 2000, a well-known polling group, to do a daily nation-wide poll. Now, while DailyKos is clearly partisan -- and got a black eye for being at the center of that stupid "Trig Palin is not Sarah's son" nonsense -- they don't do the poll. I am not in the habit of "shooting the messenger" when it comes to major polling firms -- I also reject the arguments that Rasmussen shouldn't be trusted because he's a Republican, for example.

Anyway, what I like about the DK/R2000 polls is that they also do favorability each day, and show the results. In watching these, I noticed a rather dramatic drop-off in favorability for the McCain/Palin side of the ticket, with little change for Obama and Biden:



These numbers are "net favorability" for each candidate, meaning, what percentage of those polled have a positive view of them, minus how many have a negative view. The numbers for McCain and Palin have fallen sharply -- far more sharply than the poll itself. But this may be a "leading indicator" and is certainly good to see (from someone who thinks that McCain/Palin is arguably the worst major party ticket he can ever recall seeing).