Liberty MavenBob Barr At 6% Nationally According To Zogby
July 6th, 2008 11:28 pm | by Marc Gallagher | Published in Bob Barr, Election, Politics, Polling | 3 Responses
In a new Zogby poll Bob Barr gets 6% of the vote. Also interesting in the same poll, guess how many percentage points separate Obama and McCain? That’s right, six. Obama leads McCain in the poll 44% to 38%. Since Barr is certainly getting many votes that McCain would never get, for this poll at least, Obama would win regardless of Barr.
UTICA, New York – As the race for President passes the Independence Day holiday and heads toward the dog days of summer, Sen. Barack Obama holds a 44% to 38% lead over Sen. John McCain in the horserace contest, but also leads by a substantial margin in a state-by-state Electoral College tally, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.
The extensive national poll of of 46,274 likely voters also shows Libertarian candidate and former Congressman Bob Barr wins 6% support, eating into McCain’s needed conservative base of support.
The online survey was conducted from June 11-30, 2008. It carries a margin of error of 0.5 percentage points.
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July 7th, 2008 at 1:00 am (#)
That is really fantastic news, I believe.
However, I disagree with the statement that: “Since Barr is certainly getting many votes that McCain would never get, for this poll at least, Obama would win regardless of Barr.”
For that to be true, than Barr would have to be pulling MORE votes from McCain than Obama. That may be true, and probably is, but IF he were pulling more from Obama than McCain (on the war issue, for instance), than McCain would win the poll if it were not for Barr.
JM
July 7th, 2008 at 11:16 am (#)
6% is amazing this early in the race. In 2000, Nader’s primary goal was to get 5% in the general election (which he didn’t) in order to make the green party eligible for federal funds in future elections, and shake up the 2 party system.
jgmaynard, your comments buy into the 2 party collectivist mentality that we have a 2 party system and all other parties are spoilers. Barr is definitely getting votes of people who would vote for neither Obama nor Mccain, myself for example. Elections are only a zero sum game if every eligible voter votes, which they don’t.
For example, look how many new voters Obama has signed up who might not even be registered to vote in this election otherwise. Ron Paul also cured a lot of apathy, and many people that Ron Paul signed up will likely be voting for Barr. So the idea that Barr’s votes are being pulled from either candidate is really misdirection. The two major parties want us to believe that any third party is just an election wrecker.
Obviously, I’d like to see a Libertarian Party president, but I will be happy if Barr gets enough votes to seriously throw the LP into the middle of the political tunnel vision.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:46 pm (#)
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