By Praveen Chopra, IANS
New York : If America were to elect a president today instead of Nov 4, Barack Obama has a slightly better chance of beating Republican nominee John McCain than Hillary Clinton, a Time magazine poll revealed Thursday.
In a theoretical match-up, Obama bagged 48 percent votes to beat McCain at 41 percent. On the other hand, a Clinton-McCain contest would end in a tie, each polling 46 percent votes.
This has been ascribed to the swing vote of independents – a term used for those who have neither registered as Republicans nor as Democrats.
A spokesperson for the agency that conducted an opinion poll among 1,000 registered voters Feb 1-4 explained: “Independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton. But they tilt toward Obama when he is contesting against McCain. Independents are a key battleground.”
In the earlier polls, Democrats have enjoyed a wide margin over any Republican rival in theoretical match-ups. Those margins have begun to shrink in recent weeks.
But the Time poll also found that from Democratic voters, 48 percent favour Clinton while 42 percent would like Obama to get the party ticket.
The poll also queried voters on their choice of vice presidential candidates and their impacts on a potential race.
Sixty two percent voters want Clinton to name Obama as her running mate. By contrast, only 51 percent of the same voters want Obama to return the favour.
From these voters, 55 percent believed that Obama would help Clinton’s chances were he to become her running mate and 11 percent said he would hurt her chances.
If Obama took Clinton as his running mate, it would be less favourable with 38 percent saying it would help his chances and 31 percent saying it would hurt his chances.