Pat Dollard

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The Swamp:

Sen. John McCain’s press conference performance today in response to the New York Times story on his ties to a telecommunications lobbyist was apparently good enough to win over most of those who watched it.

HCD Research conducted a focus group over the Internet involving 901 respondents which showed as much.

When asked if they believed McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee, had a relationship with a lobbyist that affected his how he performed his Senate job, more people said “no” after viewing the press conference than they did beforehand.

For instance, before viewing the tape 36 percent of the 901 surveyed answered no to that question. Afterwards, that number rose to 50 percent.

Among Republicans, those answering “no” went from 52 percent to 66 percent. Among Democrats, it went from 28 percent to 38 percent. And among independents, the percentage answering “no” before and after watching the press conference climbed from 28 percent to 47 percent.

HCD’s MediaCurves technology showed how the 901 respondents reacted to excerpts of McCain’s remarks, graphing the averages of their responses to whether McCain was believable or not.

Not surprisingly, Republicans generally found McCain more believable than independents with Democrats finding him the least believable.

But even among Democrats, his numbers never slipped into the dangerous disbelief zone though they did dip significantly among Democrats when he said the story wasn’t true and later when he said he had never done anything in Washington to betray the public trust.

Worth noting is that there was a perceptible though much slighter dip among Republicans and independents at those points also.

In sum, judging from the reaction of those who participated in today’s MediaCurves survey, McCain definitely benefited from how and what he responded today to the Times story.