A Summer Survey That May Really Matter

I’m don’t rely on presidential polls too much in late July of an election year, but there is one poll out there Friday that I do find interesting.

Senator Barack Obama is in France Friday and heads to Great Britain before returning home to Chicago. He has dominated coverage of the campaign this week from his visits to Afghanistan and Iraq prior to a speech delivered before an estimated crowd of 200,000 in Berlin. To put that in perspective, that’s about 30,000 fewer people than will be in the seats Sunday for the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis.

Senator John McCain has been at home and his high-profile campaign event of the week was grounded by weather.

Yet prior to Obama’s speech in Germany, Gallup’s Daily Tracking Poll had the race between the certain Democrat and Republican nominees within the margin of error. Gallup had Obama in front 45 percent to 43 percent from McCain.

I don’t know if that means Obama is getting not getting a bounce his high profile trip or if it’s too early to see the impact from the journey. I’ll leave that up to the smart guys to figure out.

But the poll that really got my attention was from some battleground states conducted by Quinnipiac University in partnership with washingtonpost.com and The Wall Street Journal.

That poll shows McCain making progress in the battleground states of Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

But I want you to pay attention to the data that looks at the key issues in the campaign:

- Voters in all four states - by nearly the same margin - say the U.S. should keep troops in Iraq until the situation is more stable, and then begin to withdraw them, without a fixed date for full withdrawal.

- Right at 60% of voters surveyed support drilling for new oil supplies in currently protected areas off shore.

- And by a margin of 50.2% to 40.2%, voters in those four states consider a candidate’s position on energy policy to be more important than their position on the war in Iraq.

So perhaps to steal the line and alter it from 1992, it’s the energy, stupid.

I think these numbers show we’re going to have a fascinating finish to what has been the most extraordinary presidential election that I’ve followed.

My interest is really going to grow once each candidate makes their vice presidential picks, the first substantial decision - not a position - that each man will likely makes heading to November.

And then the debates - which hopefully will have a real debate format and not the often dual news conference format of many elections past - when you can really start focusing on the race after Labor Day.

Stay tuned.