by Mark Silva
Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama “appeal to opposite ends of the age spectrum,” the Gallup Poll has found. And while Democrat Hillary Clinton fares poorer among younger voters in a match-up with McCain, she stands stronger than Obama among older voters.
Obama’s “strength in a general-election match-up against McCain” is his appeal to younger voters, Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones reports. Obama holds a 20-percentage point advantage over McCain among 18- to 29-year-old registered voters — 57 to 37 percent. McCain holds nearly as large an advantage among those 65 and older – 51 to 35 percent.
The two are closely matched among middle-aged groups.
Clinton holds just an 11-point advantage over McCain among the youngest voters. But she “offsets” this among older voters, trailing McCain by 6 points among senior citizens.
Gallup has reached into a massive base of interviews from its daily tracking polls to collect these figures, which makes their possible margin of error extremely low, just one percentage point.
are based on more than 21,000 surveys of registered voters conducted between Mar. 7 and 31.
“Overall, both hypothetical general-election contests are close, with McCain holding a one percentage point advantage over both Obama and Clinton,” Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones notes.
“The analysis also affirms a significant gender gap in general-election voting preferences, as has been the case for the last several presidential elections,” Jones notes.
“Female voters are once again aligning themselves with the Democratic candidate and male voters with the Republican. But here again, the sizes of the gender gaps differ, depending on whether Clinton or Obama is pitted against McCain.
“McCain has a 9-point advantage over Obama among male voters while Obama leads him by 5 points among women, for a total gender gap of 14 points,” Jones reports. “But if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, the gender gap expands to 22 points, with men going for McCain by 52 to 40 percent and women for Clinton by 51 to 41 percent.