Riding fresh off the crest of the wave of the primaries that have made him the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, one would think Barack Obama should be leading John McCain by 15 to 20 points.
McCain had wrapped up his party's nomination months ago and until recently has been out of the limelight. Obama and Hillary Clinton had a fight to the finish and the media coverage they received was enormous.
But then you had a Newsweek poll last week that showed Obama leading McCain by 15 points. What gives?
George McGovern and Richard Nixon were tied in the polls in the spring of 1972. By the November election, Nixon had won 49 states.
A June 1984 Newsweek poll had Walter Mondale defeating Ronald Reagan by 18 points. Reagan won 525 electoral votes out of a possible 538-the highest total of electoral votes ever received by a candidate.
And a July 1988 Gallup Poll showed Democrat Michael Dukakis in front of George H.W. Bush by a 55-38 percentage margin. Bush won in November, handily receiving 426 electoral votes to Dukakis's 111.
A June 1992 CBS poll had Ross Perot ahead of both President Bush and Bill Clinton.
A Harris poll in June 2000 showed George W. Bush leading Al Gore 58-42 percent in what turned out to be a cliff-hanger. And in June 2004, a CBS News poll had John Kerry ahead of George W. Bush by eight points.
In the last 36 years of summer presidential polling, only once did key polling data have it right and that was in 1996. Bill Clinton easily defeated Bob Dole by double-digits.
On the whole summer polls are simply unreliable.
The individual campaigns are now attempting to fine-tune their candidate's message as they position themselves for the stretch run this fall. Voters are beginning to get serious and want to see the candidates debating head to head on issues that affect them and our nation. They want to hear more than rah-rah-rah-shish-boom bah!
The liberal media up to this point have been almost exclusively focused on the word "change." It's a great sound-bite and campaign slogan up to a point but voters now want to know what does change really mean? When the answer to that becomes clear, polls, too, will be more insightful.
Does change mean we end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home without victory? Have you checked your newspaper or watched television news lately? Not too much about the war in Iraq is there? You can bet if we were losing the liberal media would be having a field-day. Where do Obama and McCain stand on this issue?
How about energy? McCain advocates drilling here at home for oil and natural gas, along with building more refineries. He also wants us to build new nuclear power plants while continuing to aggressively promote the research for alternative energy sources. McCain is committed to making us more energy independent and less reliant on foreign sources of energy supply.
Obama also says he wants to see our nation more energy independent. Like McCain, he recognizes we have an energy crisis. He, too, is a strong advocate for new greener technology to heat our homes and fuel our automobiles. But unlike his opponent, Obama is opposed to drilling and expanding nuclear power.
So what do we do until then -- sit in the dark and freeze to death? Developing and mass marketing new affordable alternative energy sources will take time -- more time perhaps than it would take to tap into the known energy resources we have available here at home.
Our "friends" in the Middle East have a stranglehold on our economy and it's getting tighter every day. Common sense says part of any comprehensive energy reform must include securing more oil and natural gas. Refusing to drill at home is not only naÃØve but tantamount to economic suicide.
And speaking of change, who will our next president be appointing to the Supreme Court? If you believe in the Bill of Rights but think the future appointments to the Supreme Court are not critical, think again. Last week, in a razor-thin 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld a U.S. citizen's constitutional right to bear arms for self-defense. Would a liberal majority on the Supreme Court have reached that decision?
Voters in America need to know where each of the candidates for the highest office in the land stand on a multitude of critical issues facing our nation as we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century.
With that understanding McCain has proposed to meet Obama in 10 town hall meetings between now and Labor Day to discuss the multitude of difficult issues facing America. Obama, who had previously stated he would debate McCain anytime, anywhere has agreed to meet him only once this summer. Why?
No wonder early polls are so unreliable. Voters are often clueless when it comes to not only the details of each candidate's proposed agenda but the consequences, good and bad, of that agenda for America as well. Until the candidates stand side by side and debate the issues of our time and until voters begin to really listen, summer polls will continue to be nothing more than another gust of hot air.
Bob Steinburg is a retiree now living in Edenton.