State of play in the USA

Obama and Clinton may still be slugging it out down to the wire [or at least until the Democratic Convention] and McCain is already the GOP's candidate, but an interesting poll just released in America gives a snap-shot of how Americans view the position of their country and the possible outcome of the election.

The Washington Post reports:

"Americans are gloomier about the direction of the country than they have been at any point in 15 years, and Democrats hold their biggest advantage since early 1993 as the party better able to deal with the nation's main problems, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Despite more than eight in 10 now saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, coupled with growing disaffection with the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain, the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, remains competitive in a hypothetical general-election matchup with Sen. Barack Obama, the favorite for the Democratic nomination, and he runs almost even with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Those findings indicate that McCain continues to elude some of the anger aimed at his party and at President Bush, whose approval ratings dipped to an all-time low in Post-ABC polling. Maintaining a separate identity will be a key to McCain's chances of winning the White House in November. Overall, Democrats hold a 21-percentage-point advantage over Republicans as the party better equipped to handle the nation's problems."

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