Financial mess plays role in shift in president picks

By DAVID KNOX

Two-thirds of respondents said they are worried to some degree about a ‘secure retirement.’

What a difference a couple of weeks make.

Boosted by growing concern about the Wall Street meltdown and Main Street credit freeze, Sen. Barack Obama is closing the gap for Ohio’s 20 electoral votes in next month’s presidential election, according to the latest Ohio Newspaper Poll.

The Illinois Democrat now trails Republican Sen. John McCain by 2 percentage points — well within the poll’s margin of error of 3.3 percent.

“It’s a statistical dead-heat,” said Eric Rademacher, interim co-director of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati, which surveyed 876 likely voters across the state Oct. 4-8.

The poll was the second of three telephone surveys commissioned by the Ohio News Organization, a consortium of the state’s eight largest newspapers, including The Vindicator.

The first poll, conducted Sept. 12-16, showed McCain leading Obama 48 percent to 42 percent, with 5 percent of the respondents saying they’d vote for independent Ralph Nader or Libertarian Bob Barr and 5 percent undecided.

The new poll found McCain’s lead down to 48-46.

“We’ve gone from a race that looked increasingly like it was going toward John McCain to a race that now is more or less even,” said Rademacher, whose institute also conducts the Ohio Poll.

Rademacher said the election was “still up for grabs” because 13 percent said they might change their minds and 3 percent were undecided. Several said they made up their minds only recently.

“I had been leaning toward Obama,” said Kim McMahon, 50, of Wauseon, a rural community about 36 miles west of Toledo. What “cemented the deal,” she said, was the crumbling stock market.

“That’s where I have my 401(k) and IRAs,” said McMahon, a divorced mother with three children in college who works three jobs — as a bank teller, at Wal-Mart and part-time catering. “Sure, I’m scared. Realistically, I figure I probably won’t be able to retire.”

Many poll respondents voiced similar fears. Two-thirds said they were “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about having a “secure retirement.”

Last week’s headlines did nothing to calm those jitters. The head of the Congressional Budget Office reported Tuesday that public and private pension funds and employees’ 401(k) and other retirement accounts lost a fifth of their value — as much as $2 trillion — in the past 15 months.

The poll found a majority of voters oppose allowing workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market.

For many respondents, financial anxiety has gone beyond Wall Street. More than a fifth said they were worried about losing their jobs. A slightly smaller percentage were worried about losing their homes.

Nearly half thought their parents’ generation was better off economically, and 54 percent thought the next generation would be worse off.

McMahon cited Obama’s background, as a multiracial child raised by a single mother and grandparents, as the reason she considered him the best choice for tough times.

“I think it’s his upbringing,” she said. “He, at least, can relate to people.”

By a small margin, more respondents agreed with her judgment: When asked which candidate “would do the best job in improving economic conditions,” Obama was favored, 47 percent to 44 percent.

Christine Skelnik, 41, of Mansfield, also made up her mind recently, and again the economy was a factor. But Obama wasn’t her choice.

“I think that Obama is fundamentally a socialist-principled person,” she said. “I believe in less government intervention and that people learn lessons individually and so are greater governors of themselves and their money.”

But while praising McCain as an ideal wartime president, she questioned his conservative economic credentials. “I was undecided, leaning toward McCain,” said Skelnik, mother of two young children whose husband is an analyst.

McCain’s choice of a running mate removed those doubts, she said. “I believe Sarah Palin has a good economic track record.”

John Eurich, a 23-year-old construction laborer from Ashtabula, said Palin also made up his mind — to vote for Obama.

“I was undecided for a long time, but the more I learned about Sarah Palin, the more I thought if something would happen to McCain she would be the next one in line.

“She doesn’t seem to have much experience and she kind of babbles on about nonsense in her interviews.”

Gary Berning, 35, of Cincinnati, a corporate tax manager for Kroger, also objected to Palin.

“Normally that would not be much of an issue,” he said. “But because of his age — what, he’s 72 — you’d think he would have gotten somebody more competent because he may not be around four years from now.”

He jeered Palin’s performance in the vice-presidential debate. “I just loved the way she just didn’t bother to answer some questions that I didn’t think she was capable of answering.”

A lifelong Republican, Berning said he favored McCain in the 2000 primary battle for president “because he was a moderate — not a hard-liner on abortion” and was disappointed “he pandered to the conservative base” by picking Palin.

Andrew Culp, 40, of Sebring doesn’t think Palin’s reputation as a hard-core conservative — especially on economic issues — is warranted.

“I think that’s media hype,” he said. “When you listen to her talk, she’s not talking like a true ultra conservative — just deregulation and no regulation.”