CAMPAIGN JOURNAL
Red Zone
by Ryan Lizza
On the eve of his first debate with George W. Bush, the good news for John Kerry is that poll after poll shows that his attempt to showcase the setbacks in Iraq is turning public opinion against the war. A new Pew poll, for example, shows that the public's confidence in Bush's handling of Iraq has dropped six points since Kerry opened his new line of attack. Kerry's strategy is undoubtedly working. The problem is that Bush's strategy of destroying Kerry's credibility is working better.
Perhaps the worst news for Kerry is his deteriorating favorability rating. In several of the most important battleground states, such as Wisconsin and Ohio, that number has dipped into the 30s in some polls since the Democratic convention in late July. In ABC's recent national poll, Kerry's favorability rating dropped from 51 to 37 percent since he left Boston, and his unfavorability rating rose from 32 to 42 percent. Pointing to his comeback in the Iowa caucuses last winter, some aides have argued that Kerry can overtake Bush in the debates. But in Iowa, even when Kerry was in third place, his favorability ratings remained strong. That is how his campaign knew that gambling everything on Iowa made sense. Kerry's high favorability rating told them he had a great deal of latent support they could tap if Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt stumbled. They were right. But now, this basic measure of the public's view of the candidate is in the red zone, making a debate revival much tougher.
Measures of other personal attributes are in similarly bad shape. Only 23 percent of respondents to the Pew poll think Kerry is "willing to take an unpopular stand." Just 28 percent say he is a "strong leader," and 36 percent say he's "good in a crisis." These numbers complicate Kerry's job in the debates in two important ways. For one, he must attack Bush without worsening his own image, especially with those delicate flowers known as swing voters, who insist they hate negative politics. For another, by sowing so many doubts about Kerry's character, Bush has preemptively undermined anything that comes out of Kerry's mouth. (Consultants sometimes call it "destroying the aircraft carrier rather than shooting down each plane.") If Kerry loses, his decision not to vigorously defend himself from Bush's attack ads this spring-the so-called rope-a-dope strategy-and not to mount a sustained character-based attack on Bush himself over the spring and summer will be seen as crucial mistakes.
Despite the recent spate of bad polling news, there are still areas of opportunity for Kerry. Pollster Stanley Greenberg, who is now advising the Kerry campaign, recently studied 3,000 interviews conducted in September and broke down potential Kerry targets into two groups. One is filled with Democratic base voters. Kerry is currently underperforming among four pillars of the Democratic coalition--white single women, well-educated white women, white union households, and African Americans--each of which is tepid in its support for different reasons. In a polling memo, Greenberg argues that blacks want Kerry to get tougher on Bush, college-educated women want to hear Kerry's plan for Iraq, and union members aren't hearing enough about the economy and doubt if Kerry's spine is steely enough to fight terrorism. But still, these should be natural Democratic voters, and the slack among them in support for Kerry is "[o]ne reason why Kerry is likely to make gains after the debate," argues Greenberg.
The other area of opportunity for Kerry is with what might be called "change-gap swing voters." Across a wide range of swing voter demographics, there is a gap between the percentage who say they want a new direction for the country and the percentage who say they support Kerry. Greenberg says the "biggest potential gold mine" is with white women without college degrees, voters who, in previous elections, have been dubbed "waitress moms." Forty-eight percent say they want a new direction, but only 41 percent of them support Kerry. This same dynamic exists among older white women, the under-30 crowd, and rural voters, whom Greenberg calls the "biggest key to the Bush election." In fact, rural voters seem to be a driving force behind the shrinking of the electoral battleground that Kerry now faces.
That shrinkage has been dramatic. Whereas Kerry's campaign was once boldly advertising in Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Virginia, all four states now appear out of reach. Kerry also seems to have given up on John Edwards's home state of North Carolina, even though several recent polls show a close race. Even more surprising is that Kerry has stopped advertising in Missouri, a bellwether state that Bush won by just three points in 2000.
This means there are only eleven true battleground states left. The rough consensus among campaign handicappers like Charlie Cook is that Kerry has 15 states and Washington, D.C., either locked up or leaning his way, for a total of 207 electoral votes. Bush has 24 states locked up or leaning his way, for a total of 208 votes. To get to victory-270 electoral votes-Bush and Kerry must fight over the remaining eleven toss-ups, worth 123 electoral votes. First, there are the three large battleground states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Then there are the three upper Midwestern states that Al Gore barely won in 2000 (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa), and the two Northeastern states that Bush narrowly won (New Hampshire and West Virginia). Finally, there are the two rapidly growing red Western states that are wild cards in this race (Colorado and Nevada) and their blue Southwestern neighbor (New Mexico).
Of the three big battlegrounds, Kerry is doing best in Pennsylvania, which Gore won by four points. Like Michigan, which was once a battleground but now seems relatively safe for Kerry, Pennsylvania appears to have resisted some of the worst post-convention trends. Bush's bounce there was small and short-lived compared with other battleground states. Kerry has to win Pennsylvania and then one more of the big three. Ohio has seen a tilt toward Bush since his convention, but it has not yet gone the way of Missouri. Florida, with its unique pastiche of ethnic groups, offers opportunities for Kerry among Miami Cubans, Jews, Haitians, and I-4 corridor Hispanics, who could offset Bush's gains in rural areas. Hurricanes have created confusion among pollsters about the state of the race. After the first debate, Kerry may have to take stock and choose between targeting Florida or Ohio.
The rest of the route to 270 goes through the eight small and midsize states concentrated in three regions. Kerry's rural problem is most acute in the upper Midwest. In both Iowa and Wisconsin, Gore did better in rural areas than he did in the rest of the country. As Michael Barone has noted, "Gore carried many historically Republican or marginal counties in western Wisconsin, just as he carried many rural counties across the Mississippi River in eastern Iowa." Kerry seems to be losing that advantage as Bush concentrates his visits and get-out-the-vote efforts on sparsely populated areas of the states. Meanwhile, Bush's lavish agricultural subsidies and the relatively buoyant local economies (especially compared with the industrial battlegrounds to the east) have made it harder for Kerry to hold onto these states. He appears safest in Minnesota, but, if he loses Wisconsin and Iowa's 17 electoral votes, his only fallback is to hold New Mexico and raid at least two of the four small states--worth 23 electoral votes--that Bush barely won in 2000.
But perhaps these small red toss-up states hold more promise than the fading blue ones anyway. New Hampshire is dead even right now and seems more natural in the Kerry column, especially since much of it has become a virtual suburb of Boston. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, a historically Democratic state that Bush won, Kerry remains competitive and has avoided association with the environment and gun-control issues that killed Gore. Finally, in the Western battlegrounds, Nevada's Clark County, home to Las Vegas, has added more people since the last presidential election than almost any other county in America. Growth there means Democrats: In every election since 1980, the percentage of the county voting Democratic has increased. Colorado, which was not even competitive in 2000, has a growing high-tech, latte-town liberal culture centered around Boulder and Denver that is offsetting the state's evangelical Christian and conservative exurbs. In nearby New Mexico, which Gore barely won, the trends also seem to favor Kerry. The pro-Bush white areas of the state are not growing nearly as fast as the pro-Kerry Hispanic and Native American areas. Nevada's explosive growth and Kerry's opposition to making Yucca Mountain a nuclear depository have opened the doors to victory.
All eleven of these states are still up for grabs, though Bush leads in more of them than Kerry does. Looking beyond the current horserace, what we may be seeing in the shifting battleground is a consolidation of general trends in both parties, with Democrats potentially locking down more of the Northeast (Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and, just possibly, West Virginia) and union-heavy states like Michigan, while Bush uses cultural issues and terrorism to increase his advantage in the rural upper Midwest. Meanwhile, the explosive growth in some Western and Southwestern states creates an unsettled electorate there that keeps both sides on their toes. With a little imagination, this shifting battleground may be an opportunity for Kerry rather than a threat.
Ryan Lizza is a senior editor at TNR.
