Polls do not equal destiny

[JNB]

 Back in 1988, when I was first starting to become aware of politics, Dukakis was ahead of Bush for most of the summer if 88. At one point, he was ahead of the polls by 17 percentage points, people were convinced that Bush had no chance, but a well ran 88 presidential convention, a excellently ran campiagn(Plus a poorly ran Dukakis one) pushed Bush to a near landslide victory. In June of 92, Clinton was running thrid the polls behind Bush and Perot is another example.

  Speaking of this, on web sites such as dailykos and Free Republic, too many people put too much weight on current polls, the polls do capture a snapshot in time, what they do not capture, much less forsee is how will a canidate present himself to the public, how well the campaign is ran, how well the issues are framed. People may try to think of Soccer Moms, NASCAR dads, university students, Latinos as static groups, but they are far from it. The best guesses, and of course they are only a guess, is looking at current congressional seats, plus legislative seats that represents a area in question, aliong with recnet presidential election results, to make a guess at what the future may hold, but then again, 88 left many people stunned.

[JNB]

  These polls do not predict the future. Like I said, in August 88, Dukakis looked like a sure winner, he was up anywhere between 10-17 points in the polls. In 83-84, before Mondale was nominated, Reagan did not look like a sure thing, he was only getting in the high 40s in the generic ballot, and I beleve some polls showed him behind Sen. Hart. The point is right now, we can make some reasonable assumptions, but those go out the window when one canidate runs a horrible campaign or another canidate runs a excellent one. While there is about 40% of the electroate that is more or less static, the 20% in the middle has a large amount of volitality.

  That is why Freepers talk of Dean = McGovren like it is a sure thing or DailyKos and DUers talking about states like MI, PA, and WI being "theirs" is also quite pre mature.

[JNB]

   In 83, no one expected Reagan to have a landslide, and in fact people gave him a 50-50 chance of winning re election. Again, had Gary Hart been the nominee, it may have been a different story(then again had Lamar Alexander been the GOP nominee in 96 it may have been a different story as well).

   2000 was somwhat unusual because the polls were so close for the entire capaign, and actually got it right for the most part(also when talking about the final results of the 2000 election ONE MUST take into account the last minuite DUI revelation that Bush had). Looking at information from previous elections, be it 88, 80 or 76, the polls had wild swings during the summer.

  As for the 92 election, Bush may have(for now at least) a more favorable economy, but I think a bigger factor, and the biggest advantage that Bush has over his father is the fact the GOP controls congress, and congress can actually get some additional legislation though in the spring and summer of next year to give Bush a big boost, unlike his father, who had to deal with a congress that threw up roadblock after roadblock.  Going into a re election campaign, a president has not had this good of a working relationship with congress since LBJ in 64(yes technically it was a election campaign).