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Washington PostBy Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 6, 2008; A09
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) kicks off his general-election campaign trailing both potential Democratic nominees in hypothetical matchups, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) leads McCain, who captured the delegates needed to claim the Republican nomination Tuesday night, by 12 percentage points among all adults in the poll; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) holds a six-point lead over the GOP nominee. Both Democrats are buoyed by moderates and independents when going head to head with McCain and benefit from sustained negative public assessments of President Bush and the war in Iraq.
About two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job and think the war was not worth fighting, and most hold those positions "strongly." A slim majority also doubt that the United States is making progress toward restoring civil order in Iraq, even as McCain and others extol recent successes there. These views are closely related to voters' choices: McCain does poorly against Clinton and Obama among those who disapprove of the president and those opposing the war. Among independents, those who see improvements in Iraq prefer McCain to either Democrat, while six in 10 of those more skeptical of progress would go for a Democrat.
Another obstacle for McCain may be his age. More than a quarter of those polled said they are less inclined to support McCain because he would be the oldest person ever to become president. The percentage discouraged by McCain's age is more than double that of people who would be less enthusiastic about supporting Obama because he is African American or Clinton because she is a woman....
The poll was conducted before Tuesday's contests, in which Clinton scored victories in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas while Obama prevailed in Vermont. The victories were Clinton's first in a month, and they further unsettled the Democratic contest....
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