No Runny Eggs

There have been a number of recent articles suggesting that Barack Obama has reached his peak and will likely see declines in his popularity.   A review of the Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll seems to confirm this.

In today’s poll, Barack Obama is shown as having a favorable rating of 52%.   His rating has dropped from a high of 56% of just 3 weeks ago.   During that same time frame, John McCain’s favorability rating has remained flat or up slightly at 53%.   While these are the numbers that generally get the headlines, it’s the underlying numbers that tell me that Obama has hit his peak.

Since Super Duper Tuesday, Barack Obama’s Very Unfavorable ratings in the Rasmussen poll have increased from 18% to 26%.   During that same time frame, McCain’s Very Unfavorable rating has decreased from 25% to 17%.   Now one will find that during this 6 week period  these ratings bounced around quite a bit.   However, regardless of how you look at it, the conclusion that Barack Obama’s Very Unfavorable rating is increasing and McCain’s are dropping is inescapable.   I think a big reason for this shift is that Obama had little media attention prior to Super Duper Tuesday and what he did get was as hopeful of him as he is for himself.   Since then, the media coverage while not yet balanced, has at least kept the fawning to a level that doesn’t immediately invoke a gag reflex.   This is not a trend that is working in Obama’s favor.   Even while this gives me confidence that the trends are moving against Obama, there is another statistic that is the coup de grâce of my conviction of Obama’s peak.

In the poll released on February 18th, the poll that showed Obama at his peak, it was stated that Barack Obama enjoyed a favorability rating of 79% of his base, liberals.   He had a very favorable rating of 51% from this same base.   In comparison, McCain had a 61% favorability rating amongst conservatives with only 20% giving him a very favorable rating.   There’s no written rule saying that presidential favorability ratings should look like a bell curve but with the country bouncing within a few percentage points of a 50%/50% split in popular vote of the past few presidential elections, it general works out that way.   This “enthusiasm gap” that Obama now enjoys will be very very difficult to maintain throughout the year.   As we move into the general campaign and McCain calls him out on his specific experience and plans, one of two things will happen.  Obama will  either spell out specifics that are more toward the center, a move he’ll need if he is to capture the moderates required to win an election and a move that will flatten the enthusiasm of the nutroots, or he’ll prove to be the empty suit, void of specifics that I believe him to be.   Either way, the enthusiasm gap has one way to go, and it ain’t up and as goes the enthusiasm gap, so will go Obama’s liklihood of being elected President.