Newsweek confirms Time Poll: Bush +11

[The Vorlon]

As for Rasmussen, his hard weighting is design to stamp out sudden large movements.  

Bush won last night's 1 day Bot sample by 6.2% FWIW

Given Bot-mans hard weight by party ID, Bush must be peeling off a lot of Dems from Kerry.

When Newsweek had Kerry +8, I said it was a junk poll.  When Newsweek has Bush +11, I say it's a junk poll.

Let's all come together in a monet of bipartisanship and agree... it's a junk poll

[The Vorlon]

This is a breakout of party ID in the Newsweek poll:

It has more Republicans than Democrats.

I reweighted Newsweek to 39/35/26 which is the exact ratio that actually showed up and voted in the 2000 race which yields a +6 result for Bush

[The Vorlon]

Nader is winning 9% if independents?  No wonder this poll looks so bad for Kerry.  

Nader got 6% of Indys in 2000, so 2 months out 9% is not crazy.

The big shift is that Bush is now pretty consistently peeling off 15% of so of Democrats and is a tad up among Independants.

This is why Kerry has gone so negative in the last few days - he needs to resolidify his base.

Question?

Are the 15% of Dems voting Bush actually Dems Kerry can get back, or are the "Zell Miller: Dems who Kerry can't reach?

The fact that Kerry has gone hard Negative seems to indicate he thinks he can re-solidify them, it's a risk going that negative when you a bit down with the Independants.

Kerry is not running a good campaign.

[The Vorlon]

I'd be much more worried about the breakdown of Independents than Democrats if I were Kerry.  Most of that 14% is southern Dems in states Kerry was never going to win anyway.

Kerry's issue is the economy & healthcare.

Memo to John Kerry:

Q: - "What's the price of tea in China...?

A: => It's the economy stupid !

Q: - "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin...?

A - => It's the economy stupid !

Q - "Why is the sky blue...?

A - => It's the economy stupid !

Class warfare, here we come

[The Vorlon]

That party breakdown is not hideously bad.  Some firms think the breakdown is about 38-38-24.  

Is the party ID by registration or self-identification?  Self IDs will likely skew away from Dems for a while following the convention.

There are two firms that track Party ID.

Gallup says the GOP actually has a 0.3% advantage over their last 40,000 interviews.

PEW says the Dems have about a 4% lead.

The two firms ask a marginally different question.

PEW just recently made a small adjustment to their sampling methodology to account for changes in response rates in various telephone exchanges (caller ID type stuff) which should (I think) bring the PEW numbers back in line with the Gallup Numbers.

The "true" breakout of party ID is an unknown.

We could debate it till the cows come home, and while there is actually a consensus on how to deal with the issue in polling, it would take far, far too long to explain and type out

If you use the PEW +4 weight then Bush is up 6%
If you go with an even split Bush is up 11%

Take your pick

[The Vorlon]

So half of it was pre-speech. Add another point or two to get to +13.

On day one of the poll bush won by 8
On day 2 of the poll he won by 16