Encouraging signs for McCain
The new NBC / Wall Street Journal poll shows Obama and Clinton level-pegging and in the general election match-ups no one leads by outside the margin of error over anyone else. The internals of the poll, though, are encouraging for McCain. His negative rating of 25 is considerably lower than either Obama---32—or Hillary who is at 48. McCain is also creeping up on Obama on his signature theme of uniting the country and only trails him 58 to 60 on this point. While McCain leads on the question of who has a set of values and background you can identify with, 57 percent of the country say this of him compared to 50 percent for Obama and only 43 percent for Hillary. Another encouraging polling development for McCain is the growing number of Democrats who say they will vote for McCain if their candidate is not the nominee.