Poll: Obama beats McCain as barbecue guest

updated 9:43 a.m. ET July 2, 2008

WASHINGTON - People would rather barbecue burgers with Barack Obama than with John McCain.

While many are still deciding who should be president, by 52 percent to 45 percent they would prefer having Obama than McCain to their summer cookout, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Wednesday.

Men are about evenly divided between the two while women prefer Obama by 11 percentage points. Whites prefer McCain, minorities Obama. And Obama is a more popular guest with younger voters while McCain does best with the oldest.

Having Obama to a barbecue would be like a relaxed family gathering, while inviting McCain "would be more like a retirement party than something fun," said Wesley Welbourne, 38, a systems engineer from Washington, D.C.

Party label means a lot, with three-quarters of Democrats picking the Democrat Obama and the same number of Republicans picking McCain, a Republican. Independents are about evenly split.

"John and I would probably have a lot to talk about," said Republican Michael Mullen, 53, of Merrimac, Mass., like McCain a Navy veteran.

One in six people saying they'd vote for McCain prefer Obama as their barbecue guest; just one in 20 Obama backers would invite McCain.

The AP-Yahoo News survey of 1,759 adults was conducted online by Knowledge Networks from June 13-23 and had an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for subgroups was larger.

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