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

Nimh! S'up, my Flying Dutchbrotha!

Let me run with a slight tangent that sozolina and bern are making about the Veepstakes.

I'm loving all this chatter about McCain, but not for the reasons you may be thinking...

First off: no way McCain takes the job, and it won't be offered seriously.

But it has a 'wow' factor among moderates and centrists and independents, who essentially aren't paying attention at the moment to Bush v. Kerry.

It gives Kerry gravitas as the Uniter Bush alleges himself to be, but which has been borne out as just another prevarication.

And it has the added benefit of annoying seemingly every single Republican who gets asked (over and over and over again) about it -- including McCain himself.

FWIW, it looks like my man General Clark has the inside track.

That would be a 'wow' for me.

Hehheh, Blatham ..

Soz, I'm with you, of course, in terms of hope. But still very bothered. I mean, this past month or so must have been the single worst month a US president has lived through in 25 years ... the 9/11 hearings, the charred, mutilated GI bodies in Falluja, the pictures of Iraqi prisoners tortured by other GIs - things have gone, let's say, positively rotten for Bush. But thanks to his ad barrage, he's actually gone up against Kerry compared to a month earlier.

Now the flow of Bush ads is not going to stop, we know that - they have very deep pockets. So what will happen if news actually turns a little better for Bush? <shakes head>

Then there's all the sounds of trouble emanating from the Kerry camp ... there's poll numbers that show Kerry rapidly losing support among 20-somethings or have an impressive array of negative buzzwords now associated with the guy, there's the candidate blaming any number of his own campaign staffers whenever something goes wrong (scroll to "to the wolves"), and a campaign that goes about its way chaotically and hasn't even opened a proper 'war room' or offices in battleground states like Ohio, a campaign that consists of an ever narrower circle of advisers with a "very territorial" way of keeping outside experts out and "friends and family" in, and apparently can't stop Kerry's speeches from being "a hash of proposals and exhortations, a "wapatooey" (Fineman) ...

I dunno ... <shakes head>

Hey PDiddie :-P

You know, like Soz, I also long thought you were African-American ... it must be cause your avatars are black! (kidding)



I am very pessimistic about what the people he has on board understand ... you really need to read this article I linked already above, for example.

You remember, for a while, last phase of the primaries and shortly thereafter, when Bush was first hacking into Kerry? My initial scepticism about his campaign was unexpectedly melting, when I saw how alertly and effectively they reacted to each smear, not letting the Bushies get away with any, but slamming an equally effective, media coverage-absorbing countermessage, issue or allegation right on to it - great! The Bush machine just wasn't getting into gear that way, and was unpleasantly surprised about that, too. Then the Shrum faction within the Kerry campaign ousted his rival Margolis, the ad maker, and apparently the guy behind that strategy. Instant silence followed, and for weeks now we've seen Kerry just taking it, hanging in the ropes.

Its funny cause all the pundits - even Craven here ;-) - were warning back then that what the Bush team was out to do was to define Kerry before he'd get to define himself - to put him down as a fence-straddler and waffler so that the viewers would view any position he were to later take with pre-formed distrustful scepticism. Well, that part just seems to have gone 100% to plan.

One article that I wanted to link above too, but can't find back now, compared the current campaign with past Kerry campaigns. It noted that Kerry tends to always slack, kinda get lost a little midway, and only when the alarm bell rings and its clear that he's really just going to lose the race if things go on like that, does he get it together, streamline his organisation and rush forward in a last, fanatic leap. Thus far, he's always made it that way. But the commentator was saying, obviously, he hasn't heard that bell yet this time round - and of course, as long as the bad global news keeps coming in for Bush, he's not going to get to that point either.

nimh

You point to the disaster which is this present administration, noting this last months events and revelations. One could even draw a line further back, say, to the Kay report and up through Clarke's testimony, all while Iraq got progressively worse.

Though Bush's stats have declined continually, we seem both to be amazed that they've declined as slowly as they have.

As to Kerry's stats...I'm not convinced this is mainly a consequence of bad campaigning or the character of the candidate.

There is one way in which the present context of American politics seems to me quite different from a decade ago. That is the organization which has been built up by the conservatives (I'm pushing Alterman's 'What Liberal Media' right now). I don't know what candidate, other than someone with quite remarkable charisma, might rise above the noise and negation and innuendo which this organization puts out. And combatting it, by way of a campaign strategy, is one hell of a task.

For example, McCain now seems to represent the sort of candidate who rises above the fray, based on a broad perception of his integrity. But look what that conservative machine did to him when he ran against Bush.

Part of the present conservative strategy (aside from all the 'waffle' stuff) is to attempt demoralization through suggestions that Kerry's numbers are poor, or much more poor than they should be...implied in this is the suggest that he's a weak candidate. I consider that to be driving some portion of the analyses on stats too.

Zogby poll put on pollingreport today has Kerry five points up on Bush, 47% to 42%. That one's not in the graphs up here yet.

That makes three Bush vs. Kerry polls thatve come out over periods since May 10. Average of the three is a 3,7% lead for Kerry. So look at the "Bush vs Kerry average" graph above and imagine drawing the line on from 0.2 to -3.7 ... looks interesting, no? For now.

Also interesting is that with Nader in the race, it's still 47%-42% for Kerry against Bush. Nader makes no difference. The 3% that opt for his name integrally move to "Other/Don't know" if it's left out.

Don't know if that's good news or bad. You could interpret it to mean, like Nader's been asserting, that he pulls in new and non-voters, who wouldnt otherwise vote Kerry anyway. And so his participation doesnt hurt Kerry at all - it actually helps him by adding more non-Bush voters to the total turnout. Or you could say that apparently, Kerry has come to look so bad to the disaffected leftists who want to vote Nader, that they won't come back to the Dem candidate even if Nader is taking out of the options.

Only reason I'm mentioning that is cause it's a tiny trendlet. making the case Nader's been asserting. Namely that his participation doesn't, in fact, merely siphon off liberal votes from Kerry's column. In the last Time/CNN poll, adding Nader detracts two percentage points each from the Bush, Kerry and Not Sure columns. In the last CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll, adding Nader takes two points each from Kerry and Other and one from Bush. In the last NBC/WSJ poll, adding Nader takes Kerry three points down and Bush two. And a poll in Oregon that gave Nader something like 8%, had almost all of that number move to Other/Not Sure if he was taken out. Mind you, just a few polls. Many of the others still show Nader taking most all of his score from what would otherwise be Kerry voters. But a trendlet, anyway.

Fromone of nimh's linked articles---

The reason to pay attention to questions about Kerry's personal favorability in the general election is a little bit different. Kerry is currently benefiting from an anti-Bush electorate, but not a pro-Kerry one. Sixty-four percent of Kerry supporters say their vote is against Bush, while 74 percent of Bush supporters say their vote is for Bush.

As The Note points out today, voters have to go through a two-step process before they oust an incumbent. First they have to decide to fire him, and then they have to decide they want to hire the challenger. Because voters' judgments about whether to fire Bush are to some degree outside of his campaign's control--facts on the ground about the war and the economy will determine the electorate's view of the president--the Bush campaign has spent most of its energy and advertising dollars trying to persuade voters not to hire Kerry.
---------
It appears that Kerry could suffer a Dean-like demise. Its the same premise. People came out early and hot for the anti-Bushiest guy they could find--and dropped him when they realized he wasn't ready for prime time. 64% of Kerry supporters don't give a **** about Kerry. Will discontent take all of these people to the polls? Sure, answering a question on the phone isn't a big commitment...

This is the biggest Bush boost I've seen yet.

Yeh, GOTV will be hard for Kerry I think, unless things in Iraq etc keep going very scary. He's not someone who personally easily enthuses blacks, unionists, blue-collar core constituencies.

My prediction: if Bush's current freefall continues over the next month or two, the momentum of his loss might entrench a public perception that he's yesterday's news, opening up this feeling of it being time to vote in a new era, like it happened with Reagan and Clinton. But if the news stabilises and the polls then do, too, he'll go into the autumn campaign still neck-by-neck with Kerry, and the people might easily end up prefering the devil they know over an unconvincing challenger.

I've heard the Devil You Know analogy quite alot lately... The Devil You Don't Know never fares well.

I agree with your prediction. But, I think the defining moment will be the post-Convention bump; how big, how long sustained...

It could just be that most pro kerry people are not wanting to let Kerry be out there to be seen as winning so they are keeping their comments moderate and letting the focus remain on Bush. I know that is what I do and maybe a lot of people do that.

I have noticed as well when people are down on the administration there seems to be this PR drive from the administration that somehow or another mangages to shut dissenters up but does not leave anyone happy about it. However, I don't think it is working now. I think people are catching on to all their misleading catch phrases like, "that statement is not accurate" (meaning that maybe one word or two is wrong but really the meaning or overall statement is right)

Also, I think most reasonable people with at least a little ordinary common sense will see the difference between answering questions with silly answers concerning SUV's and violating human rights in such a disgusting way. It won't matter if Bush ordered it or Rumsefield or anyone else in the administration, Bush is all about Iraq and now the Iraq war is associated in the voters mind with the prison abuse scandal. People may think it will go away like other scandals, but I honestly don't think people will entirely forget it come November no matter how good (which I don't believe for minute will happen with Bush in charge) the country seems. If I was a betting person I would now bet with Kerry whereas before I would not have.

The prison abuse thing is very serious, and it reflects on our country, as a whole.

However, it isn't sensible to blame Bush for it. It only makes the war uglier, and Bush, I think, is defined by the war.

Sofia

I happen to think the abuse scandal is the fault of the administration based on various news articles I have read and from just the way Rumsfeild answers his questions. However, that is for another board and I am willing to agree to disagree before we or anyone gets into it.

My point is that people are human and no matter if it is logical or not they will behave humanly even when they are jurors or voters. Now the Iraq war is tainted with the abuses and the war is Bush's war so he is tainted with the abuse scandal as well, right or wrong, its reality.

I was agreeing he got splashed, but not thrown in the pool.

Sofia, Are you kidding? Bush will NEVER take responsibility for anything; they just change the reasons if the first one doesn't work out. Where have you been all these years under Bush and company?

Here's my prediction; there are too many involved in the prison fiasco, and all the top brass trying to dodge the bullets will not work. Eventually, with the investigation being pushed by John McCain, many people in the upper echelon will be named and found guilty.

C'Mon! How can anyone blame him for prison abuses? Do we blame him for prison abuses in the US, as well?

Do we blame him for Nic Berg?

I hold him partially accountable for the resulting response--but so much of this is too silly to take seriously.

I just hope the CIA is called on the carpet--if they are the ones behind it.

Sofia has a point. Kerry is trusted a lot more than Bush on domestic issues - health, education, jobs, even "the economy". So he would benefit from the debate turning to those issues. Whereas, in a somewhat perverse irony, scandals about Iraq, 9/11, etc, actually indirectly benefit Bush, since they keep the public attention focused on the issues people trust him more on.

Of course, there's a breaking point there somewhere. When the scandals become too great in number and too serious, they turn "Iraq", "9/11" etc into liabilities rather than assets for Bush. And this is what seems to be happening right now, with the prisoner abuse scandal. In the very last polls, voters actually trust Kerry more on "Iraq" and "foreign policy" as well. Only on "the war against terrorism" Bush still has the edge. And if that trend holds, the whole thing tumbles. Once voters really start trusting Kerry more on Iraq as well, every new scandal will only confirm that. Then Bush will really be in trouble.

A month ago, on April 18th, Bush led by five points in the polls.

$70 million in misleading Bush ads later, John Kerry is up by five points (51-46).

Even more amazing is that polling among swing-state voters shows Kerry moving into the lead there as well. Ohio is moving away from close to no contest -- 51-40 in one poll. Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low of 42%, and 58% of Americans disapprove of the president's handling of Iraq.

Keep up the good work, Republicans.

Ehmm ... not to be flippant ... but if there'd be some mind-boggling shocker of a prison scandal here - not just a single prison where a handful of people do something wrong, but news of torture as a general practice - I would most definitely expect our PM to take the heat and be forced to resign.

That's his job - he's supposed to keep the government apparatus from commiting disastrousnesses. He's the boss. Many a minister has had to resign because of something his civil servants did wrong, even if he didn't know about it - or because he didn't know about it, in fact.



Latest Hersh story in the New Yorker says Rumsfeld OKd the methods that led to such abuse, doesn't it? That memo? Pentagon's still denying it, but Hersh was on the money in his previous story as well, and they initially denied that, too ...

Not that I have much up with the CIA, but blame-the-CIA has really become a sport for the current administration, it seems, no? Every time Rumsfeld, Cheney or Bush seems to get called on some misestimation or -assertion on Iraq, "faulty intel" is quickly blamed. Never mind that the intel people have actually been squirming about how Rumsfeld imposed the strongest of, erm, personal visions on what they should do and what info they should come up with, especially re: Iraq ... First they get told off by Rumsfeld and Cheney about not coming up with strong enough statements about Iraq WMD, Iraq/Al-Qaeda connections, etc - so they complied as well as they could - and now that it all falls apart, they get the blame.

Well, thats how politics works, I guess ...

Anyway, thats all waaaay off-topic ...

The buck stops anywhere below me.

You're parsing your polls, PD. CNN/Gallup had Bush in the lead by 5 points a month ago, but Zogby had Kerry in the lead by 3 back then.

Fairer would be this: a month ago, between April 11-20, the average of three different polls had Bush in the lead by one point.

In the last three polls, Kerry is in the lead by an average of 3,7%.

There's a swing to Kerry, but it's a 5% swing rather than a 10% one.

And this is, of course, after $70 million in Bush ads, but also after the single worst month the Bush government has yet had when it comes to Iraq, the 9/11 Commission spin-off, et cetera.

Half full, half-empty.