Barrack Obama tops John McCain as football-watching buddy
People would rather watch a football game with Barack Obama than with John McCain — but by barely the length of a football.Obama was the pick over McCain by a narrow 50% to 47%, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Wednesday that generally mirrored each presidential candidate's strengths and weaknesses with voters. Women, minorities, younger and unmarried people were likelier to prefer catching a game with Obama while men, whites, older and married people would rather watch with McCain.
"I think he'd be fun to sit back with and hear his experiences, all his stories," told Kyle Ferguson, 28, a Republican from Santa Rosa, Calif., who picked McCain. But reflecting a sense some voters have of McCain based on the complaints of a several Senate colleagues, he added warily, "I bet he'd probably get pretty angry and lit up if his team was losing."
Democrat James Smith, 29, of Asheville, N.C., picked Obama because he hopes he and the Democratic senator from Illinois have more in common.
"With McCain, I have such an age difference," told Smith of the Arizona senator, who is 72. But with Obama, 47, he told, "If things went well with the conversation, the football game would be forgotten. There'd be a lot of back and forth."
Such views are significant because in many elections, candidates considered more likable have an advantage.
McCain backers were a bit more intrigued by watching with Obama than the Democrat's supporters were with making McCain their football buddy. While fewer than 1 in 10 Barrack Obama backers wanted to watch with John McCain, nearly 1 in 5 McCain supporters wanted to kick back with Obama.
"He seems intensely focused in a way I am not sure he does sit down and relax," McCain supporter Lanita Linch, 41, of Harrison, Ark., told of the Republican. She told she'd rather watch with Obama because he seemed like "someone you can be comfortable and at ease with," but cautioned, "If he isn't a Cowboys fan, we'd have a problem."
Barrack Obama roots for the NFL's Chicago Bears, John McCain for the Arizona Cardinals.
With Obama struggling to win over former supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the poll had worrisome news: 35% of them would rather watch with McCain, well above the 23% figure for all Democrats.
There was also a danger sign for McCain: About three in 10 voters are still undecided or tell they might switch candidates. That group leans narrowly toward Obama as their football companion.
The poll of 1,740 adults was conducted Sept. 5-15 and has an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. It was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews.
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