Some Matchups with Barack Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin

This column tends not to track every "generic congressional ballot" that all the pollsters have been rolling out, showing one party ahead of the other, for much the same reason that our colleague Walter Shapiro cast doubt the other day about the confident prognostications of the pundits about how which way the midterm elections will go.

Same for the polls on President Obama's job approval numbers. Polls, even the most respected ones, often differ enough in their numbers that the specifics tend to blur. It's almost enough to know, in general, that Obama has hit some pretty tough sledding.

So, instead, we liked some matchups in the latest Quinnipiac University poll, conducted July 13-19, pitting Obama against the pair he beat in 2008, John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Quinnipiac asked whether the country would be better off or worse off if McCain had won the election.

That pretty much split voters. Thirty-seven percent said the country would be better off if McCain had won while 35 percent said things would be worse. Fifteen percent said they would have been about the same and 13 percent were undecided. (The margin of error is 2.1 points.) When Quinnipiac asked that question in January, 37 percent said the country would be worse off with McCain as president while 35 percent said it would be better off, with 17 percent saying things would be about the same and 11 percent undecided.

As for Palin, she has attracted a lot of attention lately for her plunge into the midterm campaign, where she has endorsed a slew of candidates.

Quinnipiac asked: Which means more to a candidate's success, if Palin campaigns for him or her, or Obama does?

The answer is that there is not much difference between the two if you add together, for both Obama and Palin, the number of voters who say campaign appearances by them do not matter or would even make it less likely they would vote for the candidate.

Fifty-seven percent of voters said Obama campaigning for a candidate would make no difference to them, while 30 percent said they'd be less likely to vote for that candidate and 12 percent said they'd be more likely to do so.

Forty-eight percent said Palin campaigning for a candidate would make no difference to their decision, while 34 percent said it would make it less likely to back that candidate and 16 percent said it would make it more likely. Quinnipiac's Peter Brown said the question was asked with the general elections in mind, but he acknowledged that the poll didn't specifically differentiate between Palin's role in the November contests and her endorsements in Republican primaries.

When it comes to how positively the two are regarded by voters, Obama is seen favorably by a 49 percent to 45 percent margin, while Palin is seen unfavorably by 49 percent to 35 percent, with the balance of those surveyed offering no opinion.

As far as Obama's job approval rating, Quinnipiac said that 48 percent disapprove of his performance and 44 percent approve, with 8 percent undecided, the worst net score he's received so far in this poll. In late May, 48 percent approved of the job he was doing while 43 percent disapproved, with 9 percent undecided.

Gallup released a poll on Tuesday that said Obama's average job approval rating in his sixth quarter in office -- April 20 through July 19 -- was 47.3 percent, his lowest quarterly average to date.

When it comes to the generic congressional ballot, Quinnipiac has the Republicans ahead 43 percent to 38 percent with 16 percent undecided. In late May, the Democrats had led by 42 percent to 36 percent with 18 percent undecided.

On Monday, Gallup released a poll conducted July 12-18 that had the Democrats opening up their first statistically significant lead over the Republicans in the congressional elections since the pollster began tracking the numbers in March. Forty-nine percent favored the Democrats compared to 43 percent who backed the Republicans.

Gallup cautioned that "whether the Democrats' edge is sustainable remains to be seen," noting that Republicans "held a four-point or better lead over Democrats in three Gallup weekly averages thus far this year, but in each case, the gap narrowed or collapsed to a tie the following week."

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