Was there any polling in which we learned the degree to which voters were Mccain supporters until the VP debate? BTW, this describes me.
There’s a list of national polls in 2008. The VP debate was on October 8.
Oddly, no (obvious) discernable difference.
I’m not sure that’s surprising at all. You seem to be assuming that Palin’s performance was a reason for people to change their minds?
For many people, Palin was a reason to vote for McCain (you can see that she’s still able to bolster candidates throughout the country). I seem to recall that announcing her as a running mate was a major boost for McCain (you might check the polls for that event).
But even more people knew they were going to vote for a candidate of their own party. They were always going to vote for/against the Republican candidate regardless of who filled the position.
Yeah, don’t forget that media and political narritives rarely resemble reality. After McCain’s VP pick, the cable news channels needed something talk about. It’s too early for anyone to really know what effect the choice will have, so the news channels immediately have to make a decision to start talking about one of three possible stories:
1) “McCain’s brilliant choice of VP is energizing the republican party!”, or
2) “McCain has fumbled badly in a VP choice that may cost him the election”, or
3) “Yeah, McCain picked somebody as his VP, but honestly, most people really aren’t going to be influenced by the VP choice either way, so it really doesn’t matter that much”.
The media will most definitely NOT focus on story #3 because that’s boring and won’t sell newspapers (even though it’s probably the most true explanation, as see by the poll numbers above showing little change after the VP debate). Republican spin doctors will focus on #1 (regardless of the truth) and try to repeat it constantly on every interview they get, hoping that if they say it often enough, people will come to belive it. Democrat spin doctors will focus on #2 for the same reason.
But just cause you heard “Sarah Palin has increased McCain’s chances” endlessly repeated on CNN and Fox News does not mean that has even a lick of truth in it.