Word: mccains
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...election day, with nothing left to do but wait for results, Obama pollster Joel Benenson spoke with TIME's Amy Sullivan. The former reporter turned numbers man talked about how the Obama team developed its strategy for taking on John McCain, how Obama managed to sustain a consistent message for the duration of the race and why the Obama campaign resisted calls to aggressively woo Hillary Clinton voters. Here's Benenson's inside take on how Obama...
...effort to define John McCain...
...things that struck us as we entered the general election was that two pieces of conventional wisdom had been stood on their heads. The first was that Barack Obama actually had a much better defined image with voters than John McCain did, especially on key attributes related to bringing about change in Washington: he had a 13-point advantage on "would stand up to special interests," a 12-point edge on whether he could "change partisan politics," a 26-point advantage on "would stand up for the middle class...
...McCain, the biography metrics were very strong--people thought he was tough, thought he was ready to be Commander in Chief. But beyond that, voters really didn't have an image of him as this fiercely independent maverick. I don't think we thought the general election would be anything other than "change vs. more of the same...
This is a guy who said, "The press corps is my base," and I think it was. He didn't get that he wasn't defined. You gotta be consistent. You gotta reinforce what you stand for. But through his campaign policies, McCain was reinforcing that he was more of the same. That "Miss Congeniality" line--what did that mean to voters? It didn't mean that he fundamentally disagreed with the ideology of George Bush...