Barack Obama’s empathy edge

"You know, there's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit - the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us - the child who's hungry, the steelworker who's been laid-off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town. When you think like this - when you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers - it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help."

— Barack Obama

*****

Presidential elections are rarely won and lost on policy. Voters instead tend to choose the person they most want to be president based on who they like. And that feeling is heavily influenced by which of the candidates they believe best understands their hopes and dreams.

Call it the empathy factor. And it matters. A lot.

New national polling done by the Washington Post and ABC News shows that President Obama has a significant edge over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney on the empathy question — although the gap between the two men has narrowed slightly since February.

Asked which man “better understands the economic problems people in this country are having”, 49 percent of people said Obama while 37 percent named Romney. Nine percent said neither man understood the economic problems of regular people while two percent said both men did.

A look inside the numbers tells a similar story. Among electorally critical independents, Obama enjoys a 47 percent to 35 percent edge over Romney. Women favor Obama over Romney by 20 points on the empathy question.

Republicans in search of a silver lining in the numbers will note that as recently as an early February Post-ABC survey, Obama held a 17-point edge on the empathy question.

In our mind, tracking how the two candidates perform on this question between now and November is the single best measure (or at least one of them) of how the race will turn out.

--courtesy the Washington Post 

Are you praying?  We can't be complacent. We can't have our eyes closed.

Are

you 

praying?

#dontsleep