If you were a bookie... Polls and bets on the 2004 elections

A propos of nothing ... now this was also one close election (1876) ... and an interesting electoral map!

How different was the distribution of American voters when the West was still empty - back then, NY, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois together still accounted for one-third of the country's electoral votes. And everything West of Iowa and Arkansas for one-tenth ...

Abe Lincoln's 1860 victory makes for an interesting electoral map, too ...!

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Rasmussen reports the below. For all the talk of war experience and national security, Kerry's speech made him look more liberal rather than less?

Quote:

A Rasmussen Reports survey shows that, following the Democratic National Convention, 46% of voters believe that Senator John Kerry is politically liberal. That's up from 43% in a survey conducted just before Kerry's convention speech.

Following the speech, the number viewing Kerry as politically moderate dropped from 41% to 38%. This movement is within the survey's margin of sampling error but clearly indicates that the Convention failed to move perceptions of Kerry towards the political center.

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People see through the facade that was the speech.

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That's a surprise..!

I'd forgotten about your prediction about offsetting bounces, could well be it.

Yeah, Kerry still hasn't been very specific. But he said stuff, and other people said stuff on his behalf -- rolling back the tax cuts for people who make over $200,000 a year, that kind of thing -- that is nonetheless more specific than he'd been. On a national scale, anyway. Not actually sure of that, I'm extrapolating from what I'm familiar with but maybe that was more familiar to others.

Interesting Op-Ed in today's NYT about what direction Kerry/ Edwards should go re: Iraq, emphasizing "respect." ("What Would Macchiaveli [sp?] Do?")

Anyway, yeah, I have the feeling things will just kinda shift incrementally this way and that, then there will be a little "OK I guess we have to decide" burst before the election, and then... the election.

[attempts not to hold breath...]

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So, no bounce, eh?

Going on record, predicting 6-8 points post-Convention for Bush.

I expect the Middlers will leach away from Kerry due to his recent politization of the new terror warnings.

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Oh, did he? I thought the timing was right on...

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Sofia wrote:

So, no bounce, eh?

Going on record, predicting 6-8 points post-Convention for Bush.

I expect the Middlers will leach away from Kerry due to his recent politization of the new terror warnings.

Zogby gave Kerry 3 point bounce. Let's see what Bush gets.

Bush could get a big bounce if he lets Cheney go. Then people will tune in the convention to see who he selects.

Why is anybody still talking about the Rasmussen poll? Last time it had Bush ahead in the popular vote by nine points!! Can a pollster stink any worse than that?

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Sofia wrote:

I expect the Middlers will leach away from Kerry due to his recent politization of the new terror warnings.

I'm surprised to learn that Kerry is the one who puts out all those terror warnings so conveniently timed for the Republicans. My impression had been that the announcer was Tom Ridge. I also thought that Mr. Ridge was the first to politicize the issue by emphasizing, in the announcement itself, that "we must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the President's leadership in the war against terror." (source)

We'll see about the magnitude of the bounces. I would expect them to be small on both sides. The campaigning and debating started much earlier this season, so more people than usual have already made up their minds, and fewer undecided people than usual are left to swing. I'd predict a 3 percent bounce for Bush/Cheney after the Republican convention, and I'm curious which one of us will be closer.

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Nicely made the point, Thomas. I was wundrin' already.

New ABC/WaPo poll came in, it does have a Kerry bounce, of some 5-8%.

The difference between this poll and the others is that it compares to one right before the Convention, rather than to one two or three weeks ago. One could hypothesize that the correlation with this one showing a Kerry bounce and the others not or hardly, suggests some confirmation of the theory that in the other polls, a Convention bounce for Kerry was cancelled out by a Bush bounce the 2-3 weeks before the Convention.

Comparing the poll of 22-25 July and 30 July-1 August, these are the differences:

3-way race, ALL registered voters:
Kerry 50% (+4)
Bush 44% (-4)
Nader 2% (-1)

3-way race, likely voters:
Kerry 49% (+3)
Bush 47% (-3)
Nader 2% (no change)

2-way race, ALL registered voters:
Kerry 52% (+4)
Bush 45% (-4)

2-way race, likely voters:
Kerry 49% (+2)
Bush 48% (-3)

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nimh wrote:

Nicely made the point, Thomas. I was wundrin' already.

Thanks! By the way, has anybody pointed this thread to the fine work published at www.electoral-vote.com? They collect state polls and use them to predict the vote of the electoral college. As it happens, the state polls show a definite swing towards Kerry, as you can see by following the "previous report" and "next report" links on their page.

Unfortunately for our side, the swing looks much more decisive than it is. The race is close, more races than usual are tied, so a small change in a candidate's vote share can swing a lot of electoral votes. Still, it's encouraging to see that there has been a bounce after all.

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Cool about the ABC/ WaPo poll. Yes, that makes sense (interesting "elections" for "convention" typo, tho! ;-)) that to measure the actual convention bounce you have to compare the numbers to immediately before the convention.

And very good point, Thomas.

Electoral-vote.com bookmarked! (They got nothin' on nimh, though. :-) )

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Kerry's biggest draw is that he is the 'anti Bush' (for those so inclined). On his own he has insufficient appeal (both personally and politically) to win. The convention rhetoric by the tired old Democrat stalwarts sounded good, but it has all been repeatedly rejected by American voters.

Despite this, elections here have been won on this basis. However, I believe that the eventual closer scrutiny of Kerry's record in the Senate (not to mention 'Nam) will be a very negative factor for him. In addition he will have continued difficulty containing the single issue loonies who make up a large part of the Democrat Party (larger relatively even than their Republican counterparts).

I predict a Bush win, albeit by a narrow margin.

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Hey! Nice to see you back, George! We missed you! Very Happy

(Edit: It turns out I missed you in more than one sense. I haven't been around too much myself lately, so didn't notice that you've been back for quite a while already.)

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Thanks very much Thomas. I'm very glad to see you back asw well.

I too have missed our dialogues and your reasoned arguments & expositions.
(Though I note you are still on the wrong side of some issues -- and you still have that damn Friedman photo as an avatar.)

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Krugman.

Long may he live. :-)

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sozobe wrote:

interesting "elections" for "convention" typo, tho! ;-))

Oops ...

----------------------------------

OK, just for convenience's and "closure's" sake (and because I'm anal), here's the overview:

To bounce or not to bounce?
Range of numbers depending on whether you take the 2-way or 3-way race and registered voters or likely voters:

horserace change: +3-4%, Zogby, July 26-29, compared to three weeks before
horserace change: +2-4%, Newsweek, July 29-30, compared to three weeks before
(horserace change: +8%, Newsweek, July 30 compared to July 29)
horserace change: -1-5%, CNN/USATod/Gallup, July 30-31, compared to one-and-a-half week before
horserace change: +1-2%, CBS, July 30-August 1, compared to two-and-a-half weeks before
horserace change: -1/+1%, ARG, July 30-August 1, compared to four weeks before
horserace change: +5-8%, ABC/WaPo, July 30-August 1, compared to one week before
horserace change: +2%, Rasmussen daily tracking: July 30, compared to five days before
EDITED to add:
horserace change: 0/-1%,, Marist, July 30-Aug 2, compared to two and a half weeks before

All in all, on average a bounce of some two percent ... still negligeable.

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georgie!

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Thomas wrote:

By the way, has anybody pointed this thread to the fine work published at www.electoral-vote.com? They collect state polls and use them to predict the vote of the electoral college. As it happens, the state polls show a definite swing towards Kerry

Cool! But egh - they take the Zogby Interactive state polls into account like any others - most of their post-Convention state data is based on the newest batch of Zogby Interactive polls, in fact. But these polls are quite the case: the sample is based on self-registration through the Net, rather than random sampling by the pollster. Self-registration through political sites and so on obviously gets you quite the unrepresentative sample - in fact, I've seen quite a few bloggers noting efforts to get more of their side registered into the sample, to skew the results. You could apply corrective measures for that all you want, but it still would end up more like reading tealeaves than anything else ... and consequently, the Zogby Interactive polls have indeed been all over the place.

Take Tennessee for example: electoral-vote.com has it as a battleground state ("barely Kerry"), but that must only be cause of Zogby's Interactive numbers. The last Zogby polls had the race there tied resp. a 2% Kerry lead. But just nine days before the tied result, the same Zogby poll had a 19% Bush lead. Anyone believe in an overnight 19% swing towards Kerry in Tennessee? SurveyUSA and Rasmussen, on the other hand, still have a 10% and 8% lead for Bush, respectively. Seems more reasonable.

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nimh wrote:

Anyone believe in an overnight 19% swing towards Kerry in Tennessee? SurveyUSA and Rasmussen, on the other hand, still have a 10% and 8% lead for Bush, respectively. Seems more reasonable.

More reasonable? As a matter of polling, perhaps. As a matter of political judgment, no. Wink

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Heh.

The Convention certainly seems to have had an effect on the veteran electorate:

Quote:

[..] the Democrats' gathering in Boston appears to have helped Mr. Kerry pull even with the president for the first time among veterans who are registered voters, a CBS News poll issued yesterday suggests. After the convention, 48 percent of them favored Mr. Kerry, and 47 percent Mr. Bush. In June, Mr. Kerry trailed Mr. Bush among veterans by 15 percentage points, and by mid-July he had narrowed the gap to six.

The nation has 25 million veterans, and when members of their households are added, they make up about 30 percent of the electorate, said Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster working with the Bush campaign. In recent decades, Mr. Goeas said, veterans' households have typically voted Republican, generally giving the party at least 60 percent of their votes.

Veterans' households outnumber both union households on the left and conservative Christian households on the right, Mr. Goeas said. And in the 2000 presidential election, their votes were especially important in Florida, where veterans make up more than 15 percent of the population. [..]

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If you were a bookie... Polls and bets on the 2004 elections

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