Voters Perceive Obama Moving to the Middle

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has done a far more effective job than Republican John McCain in recent weeks moving himself to the middle in the minds of voters, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveys.

During the Primary campaign season, Obama was viewed as politically liberal by an ever-increasing number of voters that grew to 67% by early June. However, since clinching the nomination, he has reversed that trend and is now seen as liberal by only 56%.

Twenty-two percent (22%) characterize the Democrat as Very Liberal, down from 36% early last month.

McCain similarly has been seen as politically conservative by more and more voters, also hitting 67% a month ago, but he is still viewed that way by 66%. While19% saw him as Very Conservative in early June, that figure now has risen to 28%.

The Democratic candidate is viewed as a political moderate by 27%, up from 22% three weeks earlier, while McCain is seen as a moderate by 23%, down from 26% in the survey at the beginning of June.

Historically Democratic presidential candidates veer to the left politically and Republicans to the right during the party primary season, but once they have secured the nomination, the candidates of both parties begin courting more moderate voters in the center. Perhaps as a reflection of what the new numbers say, McCain, who has been forced to keep courting conservatives in his own party, last week shook up the highest levels of his campaign staff.

Obama, at the same time, has been working with his former rival, Hillary Clinton, to help retire her campaign debt and to heal the party for the fall elections.

Since Clinton quit the race, Obama has experienced a modest bounce in the polls and now maintains a modest lead over McCain nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

The new numbers illustrate the continuing volatility of the current election cycle. Four years ago, President Bush was viewed as a conservative by 48% of voters in January, a figure that rose steadily to 64% by Election Day. Sen. John Kerry, his Democratic opponent, was seen as politically liberal by 37% at the beginning of the year and climbed to 53% in November.

Obama and McCain have far exceeded those numbers in terms of shifts in voter perception already, with four months until Election Day. Rasmussen Reports will continue to track this data on a weekly basis. Premium Members can review crosstabs each week. Summary updates can be found on the Obama-McCain By The Numbers page.

The shift for Obama is clear through the weekly surveys taken in June. Twenty-nine percent (29%) of voters surveyed June 7-8 rated Obama Very Liberal; by June 28-29, that number had fallen 5 percentage points to 22%. In the same time period, the number of voters who viewed McCain as Very Conservative stayed relatively constant -- 27% in early June and 28% three weeks later.

Obama made big gains during the month among women voters, 29% of whom rated him Very Liberal June 7-8 but only 20% did so by June 28-29. All of those numbers shifted to the Moderate column, with 29% of women rating the Democrat that way by the end of the month as opposed to 20% in early June.

For McCain, just the opposite is the case: 26% of women voters viewed him as a moderate in the June 7-8 survey but by June 28-29 that number had fallen to 22%.

Also, Obama has made gains among unaffiliated voters who are key to the outcome of the election. Where 28% viewed the Democrat as Very Liberal in early June, only 21% felt that way by the end of the month. For McCain, again the opposite is true. Rated Very Conservative by 24% of unaffiliated voters in the survey June 7-8, that number was up to 29% by June 28-29.

But McCain does appear to be healing the rift in his own party, where social conservatives have been among his loudest critics. He is now viewed as a conservative by 70% of those who describe themselves as socially, up from 63% in early June.

Currently, 15% of voters consider themselves Very Conservative and another 24% say they are Somewhat Conservative. Thirty-four percent (34%) identify themselves as politically moderate. Eighteen percent (18%) are Somewhat Liberal and 7% Very Liberal.

A recent analysis focused on how voters rated themselves ideologically on fiscal and social issues. One interesting tidbit from that story is that libertarian voters (fiscally conservative and socially liberal) favor Obama, not McCain.

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