Last week's major story lines turned more to discord among Democrats, energy policy and the search for vice presidents.
A new Pew Hispanic Center survey finds the presumptive Democratic nominee now has a strong lead among Hispanics, a sharp reversal from the primaries when Obama lost the Latino vote to Hillary Clinton by a nearly two-to-one ratio.
Obama is doing better among young and independent women than either of the last two Democratic nominees, but many older Democratic women remain undecided.
Many white evangelicals remain undecided and Obama has made few inroads into this key constituency. But the Democratic candidate enjoys strong support among the religiously unaffiliated.
The latest Pew Research Center national survey, including a sample of 503 adults on a cell phone, finds that the overall estimate of voter presidential preference is modestly affected by whether or not the cell phone respondents are included.
Even with a partisan enthusiasm gap, voter interest is already as high as in November of recent elections, two trends that may significantly alter the composition of the eventual electorate in the Democrats' favor. The proportion of swing voters is also up compared with four years ago. Nearly half of independents (47%) are undecided or may change their minds, up from 28% in June 2004.
Despite attention to Obama's former pastor, questions about McCain's relationship with the conservative religious base, interest in Romney's Mormon faith and Baptist preacher Huckabee's strong showing, only 2% of campaign stories directly focused on religion; still that was more than the attention devoted to race and gender combined.
While Obama and McCain received similar levels of media coverage, Obama remained by far the most visible candidate. Only 11% of Americans cited McCain as the candidate they had heard the most about, while more than seven-in-ten (71%) named Obama.
In a relatively light week of campaign coverage, attention focused on policy differences. Still, a fair amount of attention was also paid to some controversies and gaffes.
Already in this campaign season, more Americans -- 46% -- have gone online to get political news and campaign information than in all of 2004.
