georgeob1 wrote:You are always welcome with news like that Nimh. If the poll is accurate it implies that the undecided voters are gradually making up their minds and that roughly 3 out of 5 of them are choosing Bush.
OK. I'll bet the kids!
Heh - unless you look at the 3-way race, in which case it seems that the undecided voters are gradually making up their minds and that roughly 3 out of 4 of them are choosing Kerry ;-).
Seriously - 3 out of 5, 3 out of 4, that's nonsense of course - numbers are so close, just the rounding off can make those proportions turn around. E.g., last time Bush had 45% in the two-way and 46% in Fox's three-way, now he's got 48% in the two-way and 47% in the three-way. But one thing does seem clear: the move in the current polls seems to be mostly made of undecideds making up their minds. And though in most post-debate polls they have gone in majority to Kerry, he won't actually win the race if he doesn't manage to peel off some of the people who now intend to vote Bush.
The debate basically did a fair job in hauling in waverers to Kerry's side, but it didn't do much in terms of making people leave Bush. The CBS/NYT poll is emblematic of this trend: in the horserace, it had Kerry up 6% to 47% - and Bush down just the 1% to 48%.
Bush's approval rates underline this. Kerry's favourables may have truly bounced after the debate, but Bush's actually crept up in most polls too. Concerning job approval, the Fox, ABC/WaPo and Zogby polls showed improvement for him in the margin between approval and disapproval, CBS/NYT showed no change and only Newsweek and Gallup showed him losing ground.
A
TNR article today makes much of the same point and argues that it means Edwards will really need to play attack dog tonight:
Quote:Edwards may still be tempted to assume, as Lieberman did in 2000, that his job is to maintain or shore up his ticket's popularity with voters. The polls, however, show a very different imperative. Kerry's victory last Thursday succeeded in improving his image. An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows the debate boosted the senator's favorability rating to 47 percent of registered voters, up from 37 percent just before the contest. The clash with Bush helped undo much of the damage inflicted by the GOP's unrelenting flip-flopper attacks, and narrowed the head-to-head race to a tie.
But Kerry's victory did not produce the kind of change Democrats need to see in Bush's numbers. The ABC/Post poll showed a slight uptick in the president's unfavorability rating, but his favorability rating edged up as well. Most analysts agree that for challengers, driving up an incumbent's negatives is more important than boosting your own favorability ratings. That's because voters view elections as referenda on the incumbents, not the challengers. So the best way for Kerry to ensure that undecided voters break in his direction on Election Day is to make sure the president's unfavorable numbers keep going up.
Edwards's assignment tonight should therefore be to hit Bush (and Cheney) as hard as he can.
It's in his own political interest, too, the article adds:
Quote:If he is watching the conventional wisdom closely, Edwards should already see signs of the backlash against him that is likely to emerge if Kerry loses. While his campaign swings through small towns may help in a close election, Edwards's low visibility has sparked grousing in the press. And despite his occasionally tough rhetoric, Edwards has not escaped pundits' musings about whether he is enough of an "attack dog" for Kerry. "He needs to put a little Tabasco in his message," Donna Brazile told The New York Times. Or as Slate's Chris Suellentrop put it, "Mr. Positive needs to prove that he can go negative." For his own sake, Edwards needs to balance the public's perception of him. An aggressive yet reasoned attack on Cheney will win Edwards support from the Democratic base and nods of approval from pundits; and if Bush wins a second term, Edwards will not be seen as the man who was too nice to stop him.
