Talk Elections

AP story this morning:

Bush has opened up a double-digit lead in a second poll released after the wrap-up of the Republican National Convention. The Newsweek poll showed Bush at 52 percent, Democrat John Kerry at 41 percent and independent Ralph Nader at 3 percent.

Kerry had a 49-42 edge while Nader had 3 percent in a Newsweek poll released right after the Democratic National Convention.

The poll of 1,008 registered voters was taken Thursday and Friday and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5914894

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

    Americans are such a stupid people. They give Clinton 65% approval ratings despite the fact he broke the law, because their wallets at the time were fat, now they give this moron higher ratings because  of cowards on boats and the fact Bush wrapped himself in the American flag at the convetion. I swear since the late 60s, Americans have been slowly losing the ability to think for themselves.

Swiftboat vets were cowards?  Many were highly decorated.  That is a fact.

No, because they want an ownership society, lower taxes, accountable schools, and security from Islamists.

At least I still have the Red Sox!  And the Jets will be good this year!  And the Canes have a damn easy schedule after Friday!

...and...Edwards in 2008!  Start the campaign now.

 Cowards for being tools of the GOP and not saying it, cowards for making up lies about Kerrys service. I do not care what the bitter John O Neil says, he is a bitter angry man who wants to settle a score with Kerry, and he despite what he says, he is fully advancing the GOP agenda, of course he wont say that, because that would be the truth.

Wasn't Gore down by this much even closer to the election?

He was still able to come back, Kerry can too if he gets a consisten campaign going again.

  Your president wants an ownership society? Then stop pushing policies such as unrestrained free trade and uncontrolled immigration that drive down wages. As long as your president continues to support the4se polices(and I am under no illusions that Kerry would be any better on these issues) then ownership will continue to be further concentrated in the hands of the elite.

He has a chance if he stays out of sight in Nantucket.  That will help his numbers.

 

  In mid Sept, Gore was down 5-13 points in the polls. He slowly clawed his way back, though Mr. Bush was helped by lowballing expectations at the debates, also Mr. Gore did not focus on economic populism as he should have, and that helped cost him WVA.

Gore wouldn't have come as close as he did without the DUI story.

Assuming there is no second DUI-type story there is zero chance Kerry gets elected.

I'm still a bit amazed at the Time and Newsweek polls.
1) Time used a firm I never heard of and did most of their polling before Bush's speech, so could Bush be ahead even more?.
2) Newsweek polled registered voters, which all summer have shown a 2-4% edge to Kerry over likely voters, so would they find a bigger lead among likely voters?
3) And  what's happening at Rasmussen?  His daily tracking poll only shows a 5.5% lead by Bush.  But only 1/3 of his interviews were post Bush's speech.

But as they say Perception is Everything, and all across America the News and Papers will report Bush had a Great Convention and a solid lead based on these two polls.  So even people who paid no attention to the RNC will sense it was a success.

Looks like clear advantage Bush for now.   Can he keep the lead for 60 days?   Will the debates change anything?

Will Kerry go so negative he turns off voters?  

Kerry needs to NOT go negative.  It makes a candidate NOT look presidential and Kerry needs to sell himself as presidential if he wants to win.

This is real bad for Kerry.  Newsweek has had a slight pull in his favor so far this cycle.  Their last poll, from 7-29 to 7-30, had Kerry +8, the highest for Kerry at that time, and the second highest he has ever done.

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

I agree, Kerry cannot go negative.  Edwards must, but Kerry needs to realize that just having a last name that is not Bush is not going to win him the White House.  He needs details and specifics, he needs a positive message and he needs it yesterday.

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 ;)

I agree they are junk polls,

But I think they willstill  be influential.  
To the average American, if both Time and Newsweek have a simialr result, they will be convinced its real.    They'll hear about these rsults on their local News, they'll read about them in their Morning paper

I think that means people will conclude that the RNC was a great success and improves Bush's approval rating.  

Will this affect the undecided voters?  Will it give them confidence to back the incumbent, Bush?  
 

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

()

As I suspected.

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.

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 :)

I did notice this is a registered voter poll as opposed to likely voters.  Don't really know how that affects the "true" state of the race.

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.

Could just be at this particular post Republican convention period that an equal number of registered voters were more likely to identify as members of each party.  Just call it a result of the past 4 day Republican inforcommercial.  It resulted in a temporary spike in the number who "consider themselves" Republicans.

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 :)

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

More like Newsweek royally screwed up.

They have Bush up 3 in the safe Democrat states, and

     374  Republicans (plus or minus 6)
     303  Democrats (plus or minus 6)
     300  Independents (plus or minus 6)

Ok, let's split the difference and say Bush up 7 or 8.  Doesn't matter.  The election is a long way out.

More national poll bullsh**t... I started ignoring these a couple of months back...

N-O-V-E-M-B-E-R :)

That's the thing, wouldn't state polls tend to be even less reliable?

Often... but they are more interesting and usefull.

This is at least better than the polls showing Bush tied or getting a "negative bounce." Imagine the howling then.

Not that I put a lot of stock in polls, unless the good ones all agree on a clear advantage one way or the other.

Republicans outnumber democrats by 7% in this poll.

another point - military households are 42% to 58% non military households.

Both of these are way off.

Bush's lead is more likely 4 to 5 points. Something like 49 to 44. I said it last week. A week from now the race should be 49 to 44 in Bush's favor.

thought it was Rep plus one

I have to admit, I first heard the party breakdown at +1 % Rep, not the 7% Vorlon has.  The only possible explanations are a slef ID highly skewed by the RNC or a bad sample.

Never mind.  I just saw Vorlon's chart.  I thought he'd earlier said Rep +1.  My bad.

Yep, I remember that too.

Given the partisan breakout - TOTAL junk poll.

And you yourself give president Bush a hard time because you have failed to prepare yourself for the reality of a dynamic economy.  Hence, you find your current skillset no longer needed.

   I guess a large majority of Americans are not prepared for a dynamic economy. I find many people who are employed but wgho are worried about their jobs, and they are what is called "skilled labor", from traditional blue collar positions to people with BSEE and business degrees. I know people who have degrees in economics that can not find employment either. But Jmcfcst, I guess all these people you figure are "little people", and you do not care if blue collar positions are outsourced to China, white collar positions are outsourced to India and a flood of cheap labor is insourced to America. Get enough "little people" p***ed off, then there will be a sea change in the political landscape of the US.
 
    Lmcfcst, you and you ilk, many of you who call yourselves conservative are in the end nothing more than Social Darwinists, and unless there is an authoritarian govrenmnet in charge, Social Darwinism does not last for long.

  Also note, I said American gave criminal Clinton high ratings because their wallets were fat, and yes, I think this was sad as well, Americans are helpless sheep when it comes to thinking. They get their talking points from either Limbaugh/WSJ or the alphabet networks and the NYT.

None of those things come from Bush, and the phrase "security from Islamists" makes no sense.

JNB has turned into another partisan troll.

  How so? Because I call things like I see them? I said I am under no illusion that Kerry will be better on these issues, but I am sick of how so many self proclaimed conservatives claim uncontrolled immigration and "free" trade are good for this nation.

Free trade is good. Uncontrolled immigration sucks.

Immigration is great!  We can all have houseboys, gardeners, and other <ahem> 'services'.

Newsweek poll post RNC 2000

Bush-Gore: 49-38 (+11)
(Bush-Kerry in 2004: 52-41 (+11))


Newsweek poll post DNC 2000

Bush-Gore: 42-48 (+6)
(Bush-kerry in 2004: 42-49 (+7))



Hey stop copy/stick! ;)

Don't believe anything Princeton Associates has to say.

This poll is politically motivated to show in the next poll that "kerry is coming back after being down 11 points."

In short, its a total phony!

You nailed it!

Exactly. You are a conservative who isn't pro-big business. Not very welcome in the modern Republican party at all.

I also find it strange that you could be considered partisan when you aren't actually in a party.

We're polar opposites on this one.