The themes and issues Barack Obama hits in his acceptance speech tonight should be a good guide to what he and his campaign feels it still has to accomplish, and while a speech to a stadium packed with 75,000 partisans may not be the place to get down in the weeds about his policy positions, a Pew Research Center poll suggests he has work to do in the coming weeks in building public awareness of where he stands.
The survey says Americans know more about Obama's personal story than they do about those policy positions. Sixty-two percent know a lot or fair amount about his life, but when it comes to his foreign policy beliefs, 48 percent say they know a lot or fair amount about them, and 56 percent say they same about his economic positions.
John McCain's life story is about as well known as Obama's. He fares somewhat better than Obama on public awareness of his foreign policy stands (54 percent) and just below Obama about knowledge of his economic positions (also, 54 percent).
Looking just at independents, 55 percent say they know a lot or a fair amount about McCain's foreign policy positions compared to 42 percent for Obama. Obama and McCain come out about the same on awareness of independents about their economic positions.
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Comments
The media has spent too much time dealing with non-issues or repeating McCain's smear, which is much easier than learning the details of tax or energy issues.
People should not depend on the media because they often do not have the facts correctly. It is unrealistic for people to expect a candidate can cover pages of information in a few minute speech.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/listdocs.cfm?topic3id=89&topic2id=40&DocTypeID=1
There are websites with analysis of both candidates positions. http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
Posted by: Stan2008
| August 29, 2008 4:12 AM
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