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

On the anecdotal side, I'm seeing an awful lot of Kerry signs here in Columbus, which by some accounts is considered the swing city within the swing state. (Cleveland for Kerry, Cincinnati for Bush, Columbus...?) Including a whole lotta UA (Upper Arlington) for Kerry signs. (UA, as I've gone into here before, is a major fundraising center and Republican bastion.) There was a big local scandal about Kerry signs being ripped down there; kept happening, very systematic, the police stated they'd start making arrests, and the first arrest (midnight Kerry-sign-ripper) was the HS-aged daughter of a local Republican bigwig, acting (she said) on orders.

(Gotta get my Kerry sign...)

Another anecdote, drove up next to a big ol' American car with a zillion Kerry stickers, being driven by a guy who looked like he was probably a vet -- smiled at him, he smiled back, and while we waited for the light sozlet gave him a big thumbs-up (no prompting) and they grinned at each other a while more.

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timberlandko wrote:

If anyone stops by over there, check out the comparison they've done re this year's election vs that of 1896 ... very interesting.

That caught my intention cause what I've read about those elections (NYT history section) fascinated me. But the article itself dissapoints, Rasmussen better stick at polling. Not saying that because I think the analysis is necessarily wrong or anything, just being disappointed about it dropping all pretence of neutrality.

Look at the word choice. Outlining the differences between Dems and Reps then and now, a first bullet point characterises the Democratic position:

Quote:

the Democratic Party then and now held a strong belief that it was right and its cause was noble.

Note - statement is subjectified: the Democrats believe they are for the right thing. (As opposed to the Republicans? One could argue that the current "war cabinet" more fiercely believes in the historical destiny of their rightness than any of their predecessors since Reagan - or any Democrat, for that matter.)

OK, now the Republican position:

Quote:

Republicans then and now promote economic growth, but struggle with some of growth's rougher edges.

Note - this statement is objectified; it's a third party speaking here, the observing commentator. And what he 'neutrally' observes is that "Republicans promote economic growth". No kidding. As opposed to today's Democrats, who confidently plead for shrinking the economy, what? Everybody's for economic growth, they just differ on how to achieve it. As for their actual track record - looking at the net result of four years of Bush, what we see is that, you know, they've been "struggling" with "some" of the "rougher edges"? No sh!t.

OK, that aside. Now back to the lousy polls ;-)

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timberlandko wrote:

Today's Zogby release again has Bush over Kerry by a consistent 3, at 47 to 44 head-to-head, 46/43 in a 3-way.

Interesting sidebar - Badnarik (up from 0.3% to 0,9% to 1,2%) has almost caught up with Nader (down from 3,0% to 2,4% to 1,4%).

Cobb, alas, at 0,0% ...

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From MSNBC ...

Quote:

Kerry making scant progress in crucial statesAll 625 said that were likely to vote in the Nov. 2 election. [..]

Security the top concern

The Ohio poll found that most of those surveyed regard terrorism and national security as the most important issue in deciding their vote this November.

Twenty-seven percent of those surveyed in Ohio said terrorism was the most important issue, while 20 percent said the state of the economy was the most important.

A large majority, 57 percent, of Ohio respondents favored amending the state's constitution to allow legal recognition only of traditional heterosexual marriages.

Ohio is one of 11 states where proposed state constitutional amendments limiting marriage to man-woman couples are scheduled to be on the ballot on Election Day.

Social conservative leaders expect that those measures will increase turnout among conservative voters and that, in turn, may well benefit Bush. [..]

Of the states surveyed by Mason-Dixon, the one where Kerry appears to have the best chance is West Virginia, where he is locked in a statistical tie with Bush.

Job scarcity in West Virginia

The poll suggested that scarcity of jobs is one reason why West Virginia voters may be discontented with the president: 63 percent of West Virginia respondents said jobs in their community were hard to find, while in Ohio 48 percent said jobs were hard to find.

The two states have only slightly different unemployment rates, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with Ohio at 5.8 percent and West Virginia at 5.1 percent in August. The national average unemployment rate was 5.4 percent in August. [..]

Independent candidate Ralph Nader does not play much of a factor in the states surveyed by Mason-Dixon. His strongest showing was in New Hampshire where three percent of respondents said they'd vote for him.

Disinterest in Vietnam Era

Another strikingly insignificant factor in the voters' decisions is the mêlée over what both Bush and Kerry did during the Vietnam War era.

In Ohio, for example, eight of 10 respondents said the rival candidates' Vietnam-era activities would play no role in deciding which candidate to support. Mason-Dixon found almost identical results in the other six states it surveyed.

One constant in the Mason-Dixon polling in all the states is that roughly seven out of 10 Bush supporters said they supported him because they like him very much.

Many self-identified Kerry supporters, on the other hand, expressed ambivalence about their candidate. In Missouri, for instance, one out of every four Kerry supporters said they were voting for him only because they disliked the other candidates, while 39 percent said they'd vote for Kerry because they like him.

And in Ohio, 31 percent of Kerry supporters said they would vote for him because they disliked the other candidates; 43 percent of Kerry supporters said they were voting for him because they like him. [..]

Kerry seems to find it almost impossible to get imposing numbers of people to actually like him; his sheer unlikability was one of the reasons I so opposed him in the primaries. In today's politics, it's important whether people like you, personally, whether they feel you care about their problems and understand them. Kerry's consistently done worse than a Democrat should on those counts, just like he did badly on them compared to Edwards earlier this year.

You have a President who's imposed tax cuts that overwhelmingly favoured the top 10% richest people in the country while cutting services for the lower-incomes. That's potentially an easy political score to haul in - except when you're a Boston Brahmin yourself, whose widely seen to be aloof and elitist and unfamiliar with the cares and needs of ordinary folk. Kitesurfing in Nantucket, or what was it ...

Now there's something Kerry could actually learn from William Jennings Bryan about.

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Slip sliding away.

I interject as a surprise poster, but I have been reading along all along.

We have sign vandalism going on in our town. Our signs are very large...

I am not sure at all what good, or, alternatively, bad, they do.

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Glad to see you here, osso. The vandals should be thrashed, whatever their leaning. There's simply no excuse for such boorishness, and if I were to witness some idiot in the act, I'd have to restrain myself from dealing with the goon on the spot.

nimh, our respective takes on the comparison were not dissimilar. I too was disappointed by its superficiality, and somewhat surprised by its not-so-veiled partiality. Interesting perhaps more for that than for the scant information it presented. I've long been fascinated by the McKinley/Bryan contest ... that whole era, really, and the manner in which developments proceded from the Civil War, the rise of The Robber Barrons, and America's emergence onto the World Stage as a real power player.

Anyhow, I digress. An odd demographic internal beginning to emerge among several polls strikes me as meriting more media play than it has recieved so far. Specifically, Kerry seems to have been unable to effectively engage women voters; there is little if any real spread between his support from men and that from women. In recent history, women have tended to favor the Democratic candidate disproportionately to men ... strikingly so. Just as striking this cycle is that seems not to be present case. I know its something I'm going to start watching more closely. I suspect that arcane little particular may say much about the present broad trending. Without the soccer moms and suzy secretaries firmly in his corner, as they were both for Carter and Clinton, Kerry has a much steeper hill to climb.

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sorry i don't have more backup on this..

earlier today i saw a snippet of a piece regarding a "get out the single woman vote" drive that apparently gloria steinem has some involvement in. according to the piece, something like 22 million single woman did not vote in the 2000 election.

i'll see if i can find anything else on it

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Hmm, most single women I know vote. But that is just me.

And I knew Gloria before she was Gloria, as a reader of the early days, Glamour magazine et al. I don't dislike her. But if I know anyone that votes, it's single women.

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ossobuco wrote:

Hmm, most single women I know vote. But that is just me.

hey ya ossobucco! how's paco?

my sister in law has been apolitical for as long as i've known her. but she actually updated her registration just so she can vote against bush. moderate, progressive, liberal, whatever, i think all women have a vested interest in seeing that g.w. does not get another term.

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Hi Osso! Nice to see you.

DTOM has a good point, I've also read such a report on a campaign specifically out to tackle serious under-turnout among single women. The story focused on the, let's say, "Sex in the City" generation of 20- or 30-something single urban women, who apparently vote far less regularly than family women, even while, judging the demographics (profession, place of residence, age) they would be prime Democrat voters to pick. They certainly won't have much up with Bush ... but again it might have helped if Edwards had been the candidate ;-)

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Electoral-vote.com adds another, be it rather trivial, qualifier to the polls. Yes, cellphone-only users are passed by in the polls, and because of their increasing numbers that would skew the polls - the site apparently dealt with that previously. (I'm not sure how exactly it would skew them, though - cellphone-only users might above-averagely be urban professionals or aged 18-29, which means Kerry, but they might also more than average be male or aged 30-45, which means Bush).

But it now adds another marginal element to take into consideration:

Quote:

A reader pointed out another block of voters who are missed in telephone polls: people using Internet telephone companies such as Vonage. Early adopters of new technologies like VoIP (Voice over IP) are typically highly skilled urban professionals with college degrees working in modern industries. This is prime Kerry territory. Their numbers are still small, but here is another example of voters who are predominantly pro Kerry being undersampled by the telephone polls. As a compensation, they are likely to be oversampled in Zogby's interactive polls. In any event, this raises yet another methodological issue.

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Timberlandko wrote:

Specifically, Kerry seems to have been unable to effectively engage women voters; there is little if any real spread between his support from men and that from women. In recent history, women have tended to favor the Democratic candidate disproportionately to men ... strikingly so. Just as striking this cycle is that seems not to be present case.

Timber, interesting point (about the lacking gender gap) - but even within this election cycle it's recent. I'd have to dig up some of my old posts here, but I strongly remember that all the way up to, well, just before or during the Republican Convention, Kerry/Edwards did indeed 'enjoy' a huge gender gap, habitually polling 10% higher or more among women than men. It actually seemed like a high gap even considering there's always a bit of one.

But the Republican Convention (or the surrounding period) seems to have all but erased it, all of a sudden. Highly curious. I guess the Convention really succeeded in bringing the "security/terrorism" issue home to women voters.

Wait, lemme check if I'm not making this up (do a search on "men women Bush Kerry" in my posts).

-------

Here we are:

Sept 2003: Men prefer Bush over Clark 52%/41%, women prefer Clark 45%/42%. Gender gap: 14%

July 2004: Florida men prefer Bush 54%/38% and among Michigan men they are tied; "Among women, Kerry has the same wide lead".

July 2004: Men prefer Bush over Kerry 47%/44%, women prefer Kerry 50%/42%. Gender gap: 11%

August 13: "Bush has a 8% lead among men, Kerry a 10% lead among women." Gender gap: 18%.

September 9: "[..] prior to the Republican convention [..], Kerry held a seven-point lead over Mr. Bush among women. Now, support for Kerry among women has dropped 10 points, and Mr. Bush has a five-point edge. Male voters before the convention gave Mr. Bush a seven-point lead; his lead with men now is 15 points." Gender gap pre-convention: 14%. Post-Convention: 10%.

September 11: "Bush's gains have been led by women, independents, and younger voters."

September 11: "Bush has an identical 49% to 43% lead among both men and women". Gender gap: 0%.

Astounding, really, that turn-around. I'll keep an eye open too, see if we can corroborate this.

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OK, a graph to keep our hopes up. Ignore the Gallup poll, and things dont look hopeless yet.

http://www.pollingreport.com/images/SEPgen3.GIF

Admittably, its all the talk of things looking hopeless by people like me that will worsen things, as it might demoralise the activists a bit and dampen turnout among wobbly Dem voters, the kind who often don't vote at all and now might again think, ah, what's the use. So go PDiddie, go. ;-)

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It does look pretty hopeless for Kerry and the Democrats to me. Isn't that wonderful !

The Democrats were so anxious to sidetrack the unelectable Howard Dean a few months ago, they thoughtlessly rushed to embrace Kerry. In other circumstances I don't think they would have chosen him. Even apart from his decidedly left wing record in the Senate, his campaign has revealed a nimber of serious misjudgements, both strategic and tactical, on his part.

Kerry, it seems, is the principal consumer of his own propaganda. A fitting successor to the parade of Democrat failures - McGovern, Carter, Mondale, & Dukakis. Somehow Carter won an election, but failed in office. Clinton is the sole Democrat exception in recent decades, and the unfolding of events is discrediting him as well.

Critics will say this country was more admired under Clinton, however, one's competitors always admire a failing front runner.

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georgeob1 wrote:

... one's competitors always admire a failing front runner.

Good point. Kerry should take hope from the thought. Laughing

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He is far too fascinated with his own reflection to notice.

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Zogby shows Kerry moving toward victory!!

That is the only conclusion that can be drawn by the latest Zogby poll.

I have no idea how Timberland, Georgob, and these other people arrive at their silly conclusions about the Zogby poll reults.

In a race where all candidates are considered, the latest Zogby poll shows Bush up by a mere three points. The Zogby poll a week before this showed Bush up by four points in an all-candidates race!

So Kerry is one point better off now than he was a week or so ago, when the last Zogby poll came out.

All the pundits are proclaiming a virtual Bush victory at hand. Timberland is posting pictures of Kerry as Don Quixote with Edwards as his Sancho Panza. Yet Kerry, despite the press covering him little, (because, you know, everyone knows Kerry's going down, lol), is actually moving UP in the most respected poll, Zogby.

The election is six weeks away. If Kerry goes up a point a week for the next six weeks, as he is presently doing, he finishes ahead of Bush by three points in the popular vote. And three points advantage in the popular vote will result in the Electoral College agreeing. The divergence between the Electoral College and the popular vote only happens with the popular vote victory is less than 1%.

Here's a news flash, fellows. At the present rate of Kerry "going down", he finishes three points ahead of Bush by Election Day!! Razz

Am I satisfied with the way the Kerry campaign is going? No. I think he needs more focus, and the press needs to be prodded from the left to actually cover his campaign, and stop paying attention to this network of right wing websites, ("blogs") which is contantly trying to pressure the press to cover everything BUT Kerry's campaign.

But the facts are there, ladies and gentlemen. Even thought this has not been a good few weeks for Kerry, he is moving in the direction of winning by three points over Bush.

For those of you who haven't noticed, the Republicans love to characterize themselves as an unstoppable force, seizing upon every opportunity to proclaim this election virtually over.

Considering this is after a bad few weeks, the fact that Kerry is moving at a rate that gives him a three point popular vote victory indicates that the real message is quite the opposite.

Instead of being an unstoppable force, I would say the Republicans are in the position of the prizefighter who just hit his opponent flat on the jaw with his hardest punch, and finds to his horror his opponent just smiles back at him, unhurt, and asks, "Is that all you got?" Mr. Green

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Yeah, but Kerry has a very big (and glass) jaw. Moreover he has, on the issues, consistently boxed himself in to corners from which he can't easily escape.

The recent declines in Kerry's statistics reflect adverse character and trust perceptions. Experience shows that such things are lasting in the minds of the electorate.

Do you really believe that all the two datapoint "trends" one may observe in this maze of poll data will be continued linearly - without modification - until the election? Nothing in the data - nothing at all - supports that rather novel expectation.

Dream on !

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I think the overriding point, which I agree with, is that things don't look great -- but it's far from over. 6 weeks left, and a lot could happen. There was a time not too long ago when things looked awfully good for Kerry. The fact that things look bad now only means that things look bad now -- and as nimh points out, "bad" isn't so bad as all that.

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Gotta admire your pluck, there, kelticwizard ... its good to see you're still enthusiastic

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the latest CBS, which has it Bush by 9 in the Registered Voter 3-way, Bush 50, Kerry 41, Nader/Other 1, there are some interesting internals;

Kerry Approval/Disapproval 31/42, trending negatively, Bush Approval/Disapproval 47/38 trending flat to positively.

By 55 to 23, respondents say they feel " ... the policies of the Bush Administration have made the United States safer from terrorism"

By 66 to 29, respondents say they feel Bush " ... shares the moral values most Americans try to live by", while on the same question Kerry scores 55/31.

By 54 to 39, respondents say they feel " ... the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq". The same is reported for the question "Should the United States troops stay in Iraq as long as it takes ... "

By 51 to 44, respondents say they feel " ... Bush legitimately won the 2000 presidential election"

Way too early yet to schedule a post-morten for The Kerry Campaign, but I'd say it would not be inappropriate to say definitely it has been moved to Intensive Care and placed on the critical list.

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

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