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Day 21: IBD/TIPP Tracking Poll The race tightened again Sunday as independents who'd been leaning to Obama shifted to McCain to leave that key group a toss-up. McCain also pulled even in the Midwest, moved back into the lead with men, padded his gains among Protestants and Catholics, and is favored for the first time by high school graduates.

The race tightened again Sunday as independents who'd been leaning to Obama shifted to McCain to leave that key group a toss-up. McCain also pulled even in the Midwest, moved back into the lead with men, padded his gains among Protestants and Catholics, and is favored for the first time by high school graduates.

Steve Marcus Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee, poses with supporters Tuesday in Henderson at a rally that produced a change in the candidate’s tone.*********************************************** Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin unveiled a new stump speech before a crowd of thousands at the Henderson Pavilion, appealing directly to women and softening her overall tone. “It’s about time we shattered that glass ceiling once and for all,” said Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. And the chant went up: “Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!” Palin offered a range of women- and family-friendly policy proposals not usually heard from Republican candidates. She called for...

PARK RIDGE, Ill., Oct 17, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- A new survey by management consulting firm George S. May International shows 62 percent of small business owners said they would cross party lines this year to vote for the U.S. presidential candidate that they feel will do the most to help their business. A poll of 850 small business owners across the United States found that nearly half said they feel their business is in jeopardy with 56 percent saying the current credit crunch has adversely impacted their business: -- 23 percent cited late-paying customers and vendors -- 14 percent...

Barack Obama has taken a slight lead with white independent voters for the first time in the presidential race, positioning him to capture a key demographic group that has eluded recent Democratic nominees, according to a Politico analysis of independent voting patterns. According to Gallup’s weekly average of some 6,400 registered voters, Obama now holds a 45 percent-43 percent edge over Republican John McCain with white independents. About eight in 10 independents are white. Should Obama’s support hold, he is positioned to become the first Democrat to win white independents in a two-man race since the advent of exit polling....

An evangelist and Middle East expert believes a substantial number of Jewish voters in the U.S. will vote for John McCain because they are deeply concerned about a Barack Obama presidency. Tom Doyle serves as the Middle East director for the strategic church-planting ministry e3 Partners, and recently released his new book Two Nations Under God: Why You Should Care About Israel. Not only does Doyle believe the people of Israel are nervous about a possible Barack Obama presidency, he believes a growing number of Jewish voters in the America feel the same. GOP and Democratic logos"Jews who live in...

4,134 cast ballots for president Saturday, October 4, 2008 3:20 AM By Mark Niquette THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Ohio State University student Lauren Slutzky didn't want to risk having to wait for hours in a long line to vote on Election Day. Eddie Booker, 68, of Columbus, has never voted before but wanted to be a part of history this year. Both are among the thousands of Franklin County residents who went to Veterans Memorial during the opening days of early absentee voting this week, getting registered if they weren't on the rolls and casting ballots for the Nov. 4 election....

He said he would involve former Vice President Al Gore in efforts to address the issue. "I would tap him, I would tap people who have been involved in these issues for many years." McCain noted that he disagreed with the Nobel Peace Prize winner about nuclear energy but added, "I have great respect for Al Gore."

Washington, Sept 27: If one goes by a poll conducted minutes after Friday night's debate between Republican candidate John McCain and his Democrat opponent Barack Obama last night, the former is seen garnering more uncommitted voters than the latter. 46 percent of voters surveyed said their opinion of Obama got better tonight, while 32 percent said their opinion of McCain got better, reported cbsnews.com. The poll was conducted on over 500 voters, who haven't yet decided who they would vote for and also those who have chosen a candidate but may still change their minds. 39 percent of uncommitted voters...

Pamela Brown came to see the equation-changer for herself. She is a musician, teacher, and JFK assassination buff from Eden Prairie who stood in the mob at Friday's John McCain-Sarah Palin rally at an airplane hangar in Blaine. Brown said she shifted from the Democratic side to 'undecided' when McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, named Palin, the Alaska governor, as his running mate. "She changed the equation,'' said Brown, who said she voted Democratic in the last two presidential elections but also has "a brick with my name on it in the Reagan library." She sees Palin as a refreshing...

Observant Catholics are returning to the Republican fold now that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has joined the GOP ticket - a shift that looks to be more enduring than a postconvention bounce. If the trend sticks, it will mark a partial setback for Democrats and the Obama campaign, who have vied vigorously for the pivotal votes of Roman Catholics. Before the national political conventions, presidential contenders Barack Obama and John McCain were about splitting the votes of white Catholics who attend church weekly. That was a weak showing for the GOP's Senator McCain; in 2004, President Bush carried this group...

Jessica Goral had pretty much made up her mind two weeks ago: she was going to vote for Barack Obama. Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running-mate. “She empowers a lot of women,” said Mrs Goral, a mother of two in Macomb County – a national bellwether in the battleground state of Michigan and an area rich in white, working-class swing voters who will play an important role in deciding the election in November. “I like that she’s a brand new mother, and that she has the courage to stand behind her pregnant daughter. She relates to working...

NASCAR on Ice: Every election, pollsters and pundits introduce another voter group whose views are certain to decide the outcome: soccer moms, NASCAR dads, security moms, office park dads, and (three times in the past week) Wal-Mart moms. These categories, while sometimes useful, share an important methodological flaw: On Election Day, when undecided voters finally make up their minds, exit pollsters don't ask them where they work or where they shop, what sports they watch or what games their children play. Exit polls eschew these trendy questions in favor of boring demographic perennials like age, race, gender, education, and income...

Following is the speech that Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democrats' candidate for vice president in 2000, prepared for delivery to the Republican Convention on Tuesday night.Thank you for that warm welcome. I am honored to be here. We meet tonight in the wake of a terrible storm that has hit the Gulf Coast but that hurts all of us, because we are all members of our larger American family. At times like this, we set aside all that divides us, and we come together to help our fellow citizens in need. What matters is certainly not whether we are Democrats...

DENVER — Ian Bowman-Henderson scraped together $300 — cashing in his high school graduation checks — to pay for a round-trip plane ticket from Cincinnati to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. But as the week wore on, he said he was not sure if the money had been well spent. Mr. Bowman-Henderson, 19, and some other young voters who were part of the nucleus of Mr. Obama’s presidential bid said the convention process had left them marginalized as more centrist views on issues like offshore drilling took hold. “We understand the politics of compromise and that Senator Obama has...

Barack Obama has problems with Jewish seniors in Florida, say two Democratic lawmakers there. Florida state Sen. Nan Rich told JTA that Obama surrogates have been “shocked” by the hostility they have encountered at condominiums in her area aimed at their candidate. Steve Geller, who serves as the Democratic minority leader in the Florida state Senate and represents parts of Broward County, said he was nearly chased out of the "condos" -- shorthand for retirement communities -- when he said he backed Obama. "I've noticed almost a mob mentality," Geller said. "I can change people's minds in a group of...

Barack Obama will lose the November election to John McCain unless he overhauls his message of change, outlines specific plans and reassures Americans that he is one of them, according to swing voters in Denver. The results of a focus group held by Frank Luntz, the leading American pollster, on the eve of the Democratic convention should sound alarm bells for the Obama campaign after a month in which Mr McCain, the Republican, has drawn level in the polls. "The way that he gets here to the Democratic nomination - 'change' - is not how he gets there, to the...

Sen. John McCain reminded Pennsylvanians Tuesday that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama said the state's small-town voters "cling to guns and religion" because they are "bitter," a gaffe that possibly contributed to Mr. Obama's loss in the state primary and might haunt his general election campaign in this battleground. Mr. McCain told a town hall meeting that this state's voters are the "heartland," and "beam of hope and liberty for everyone in the world." His reprise of the "bitter" flap - an off-the-cuff remark made by Mr. Obama at a private fundraising event in San Francisco prior to...

Here is the latest ad from the McCain camp. Pretty effective I think using the words of leading Dems to praise McCain. The best part comes at the end from Hillary, "I know Senator McCain has a life time of experience that he will bring to the White House and Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." Ouch. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSpcxkKlEFA

Sen. Barack Obama is doing what Republicans once thought only a presidential candidacy by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton could do - uniting the right and center. State Republican Party leaders interviewed by The Washington Times said fear of a far-left Obama presidency is warming once-skeptical voters to Sen. John McCain, fueling growing enthusiasm among Republicans that Mr. McCain's more aggressive campaigning can lead to victory...