Pew: It's A Blowout

The new national Pew poll, one of my faves, has Obama ahead by 14 points -- and the data just gets worse for McCain the deeper you go. It's particularly worth noting that people now believe, by a wide margin, that Obama will win; that assumption makes it easier to imagine him as President, which makes it harder to imagine him as a terrorist-coddling Marxist. And indeed, Obama's favorability rating keeps climbing despite the attacks, and is now at a killer 68%, with only 29% unfavorable, a +39 margin. Biden's favorability is also up, standing at a +31 margin, while both McCain's (+12) and Palin's (-5) are sloping the wrong way.

Pew breaks out "Swing Voters," or "persuadables" as I like to call them, who are either truly undecided or are leaning one way but not certain. That's 23% of the total in this survey, breaking down roughly as 6% leaning McCain, 8% leaning Obama, 9% truly undecided. In a lot of key ways, those Swing Voters look more like the certain Obama voters than the certain McCain voters. For example, Pew ranks the top issues that the three groups rate as most important in the election. Economy is number one for all three groups, but the next three (in slightly different order) are the same for both the Swing Voters and the Certain Obama voters: Jobs, Health Care, and Education. For McCain voters, however, the next three are Taxes, Terrorism, and Energy.