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

49%/46%, 48%/45%, and 47%/45% are "narrow pluralities". 53%/40% and 55%/39% on the otherhand, are clear majorities. :wink:

I'd heard about it, Timber, but somehow I never got to actually checking it out. Thats why I need you folks to remind me sometimes from now on ;-)

Talking about polls and sites, can I just give this one a plug too? Quite useful: http://2.004k.com

Not on there:
Reuters/Zogby Tracking Poll. Oct. 4-6, 2004, compared to the three previous days:

Bush 46% (no ch.)
Kerry 44% (+1)
Nader 2% (no ch.)

What about the daily tracking polls?

ABC/WaPo: no change, with Bush at 49%, Kerry at 47% and Nader at 1%
Rasmussen: slight shift to Bush, with Bush at 47,8% and Kerry at 46,7%

Rasmussen also has Cheney winning the Veep debate by a 42% to 33% margin.

I know I know ... I'm trying to cut down on my sentence length ... ;-)

Hey, if Kerry can do it ...

Came here to see if AP has been posted, it has.

Whee!

But yeah, tomorrow. Gawd this is big. Strong finisher. Michael Jordan. Gimme that ball.

<chewing fingernails>

My god, george, this is not a paragraph you want to put on a placard and thrust high for all to see.

First of all, we note that indeed, after-thoughts are a grand thing with much to be said for them. In the same breath, we add there's also much to be said in commendation of those whose character allows even the odd after-thought to attend. But when your shiny DeSoto is already over the cliff-edge and descending rapidly towards the rocks far below, after-thoughts pale somewhat in appeal and, as your mother-in-law screeching in the backseat indicates, a little pre-thought can prove preferable (see the analogy above, or, see Iraq). "After-thoughts" and "George Bush" do not sit comfortably in the same paragraph. Hell, they don't sit comfortably in the same universe. Mistake one.

And then, of all historical figures you might invite in to stand beside Bush and Kerry, hoping to shine a favorable light on your fella, you choose Alcibiades?! Well, ok, this was your idea. Let's elucidate that which we know of Alcibiades and see where we find matches or mis-matches with your candidate...

- brilliant intellect and chummed around with possibly the greatest philosopher of the ancient world. Not really Dubya, is it?
- fought bravely in war. No, that doesn't fit either.
- born high and wealthy. Yup.
- blessed with the advantages of being raised in THE household where the powerful of the world traipsed in and out. Yup.
- notoriously insolent and petulant, which, because of his social position and wealth, few dared punish. Yup, good fit on that one.
- little if any genuine belief in democratic institutions (Thucydides has him speaking of democracy as 'acknowledged folly'). Well, here we have the most profound similarity between Bush and Alcibiades, along with this last descriptor following,
- saw his way to power through war and conquest.

Perhaps, but look at the out I left for myself. Note also the references to the deeper aspects of character.

Ambitious - check; exceedingly vain and pretentious - check; eager to put self interest before those of the state - check; sought the symbols of warrier adventure, but not the reality and facts of it - check; born of wealth and priveledge - check; married into more money - check; changed his positions and allies quickly with the breezes of fortune - check; hung around with the "intellectual" elites - check (I am no fan of Plato). Narcissistic personality - check.


I considered it a toss up as to whether you or Setanta would strike first.

You certainly packed the metaphors and inferences into that DeSoto over the cliff bit. Vintage Blatham stuff, that.

What the hell - it seemed a good idea at the time.

You know how people say, "It seemed like a good idea at the time," when they do something foolish? Like getting a tattoo? Then comes the next morning. you wake up with a case of the remos (how a friend used to describe the remorse that sometimes followed a Saturday night of partying). This usually happens following the house painting party you held last week inviting all those 'friends" to help paint the kitchen if you provide the beer.

You did THAT? LOL

The only thing I learned about home maintenance is never hang wallpaper with your spouse. Everything else, do by yourself.

Edit - I don't know what possessed me to post this here. Makes no sense with the thread. Please excuse, but read if you are curious.



asked a boyfriend I was beyond mad about to help me in fixing up my mother's house... in that I had a little party one sunday. He, an m.d., was useless, useless, and everybody else ate the food and imbibed the night away, and I suppose I did too, though I had a different picture in mind.

This was a long time ago.

I should have been much more clear as to my needs.

(Well, then, no one would have been there.)

Eh, I guess it can work, but it's probably a distracting idea to actually getting anything done at all, much less done any where near right.

pssst...it was socrates, you numbskull.

There are now two polls by ABC and CNN about the second debate. They see it as essentially tied, which corresponds to my personal impression from watching it.

ABC:

Kerry 44%
Bush 41%
Tie 13 %
Sampling error 4-5%

CNN:

Kerry 47%
Bush 45%
Sampling error 4-5%

I'm inclined to agree. It will be interesting to see what the trend of the election polls reveals over the next few days.

Prior to the debate Bush's approximately 5% lead was eroding, down to, perhaps 2% or 3%, and Kerry's momentum was continuing. I believe the debate has likely stopped that momentum and that we will see the polls settle down with a Bush lead of about 3%. Certainly a close election, but Kerry doesn't have much time left to score, and I believe the electorate will, on a close call, be reluctand to change course.

I agree with both Thomas and georgeob, the debate was too close to call; but more importantly, I'm wondering who won the debate amongst the undecideds. When I looked at the polls yesterday on the debate, they had Kerry winning with 77 percent vs Bush's 22 percent; I knew that couldn't be accurate. Bush and Kerry were big disappointments from my perspective. They both failed to answer questions, and didn't always stay with the facts. Also disappointing is the fact that most voters in this country doesn't hold our candidates to a higher level of ethics.

There was very little commentary on the debate after the debate except from Karen Hughes on all three networks - and she was drawing her conclusions that Bush is a knight in shining armor and a forensic star as well.

I guess the polls say otherwise. So will the November 2nd polls.

My bet would be that after this election the cable networks are going to hire a lot of new faces and put a lot talking heads into the box with Howdy Doody and Charlie McCarthy (put O'Reilly into Arthur Godfrey's box and put Hannity in the cage with the gorilla).

Will Nader steal votes from Bush. If I were an odds maker (and I do know of the binomial theorem) that variable would be an important variable.

Just so the votes are correctly added up - I don't think algebra is required or will be to know if it's four more years or "four more weeks!"

x doesn't always equal y.

I meant to say all three major cable networks i.e. Fox, CNN, MSNBC.

CBN has their opinions and so does the German News Network. Those rank at a par as a fourth news source on cable.

ABC and CBS were once not impeded by the digital and cable divides. But I like their polls. There will never be another Walter Cronkite.

And that's the way it was.

The online polls reveal nothing more than that online polls are useless. Given the editorial attitude of the likes of CNN and ABC News, their assessments of "Essentially Tied" are at the very best very worrisome for the Kerry Camp.

Of note as well is the observation that Kerry's apparent spike on the IEM and TradeSports charts has evaporated. At TradeSports, Kerry's issue opened this morning at 45, and currently is trading off a full two points, at 43.0 on relatively normal volume of 687 for current session/34,138 over lifetime as of 19:00 BST, while the Bush issue, which opened at 55.2 currently is trading up nearly 2 points, at 58.0 on relatively robust Volume-for-Session of 22430, Volume-overLlifetime of 637,179. Yesterday's Kerry closing and average prices were significantly outside the standard deviation, on relatively-normal-to-light-for-the-issue volume, while today's have returned to long-term-normal rangs, leading to the suspicion yesterday's performance was artificially inflated by the actions of a relatively few infrequent traders.

At IEM, the situation is similar, Kerry currently trading on the Winner-Take-All board at 45.0 vs Bush at 54.5, though more indicative, IMO, is the tick for the Vote Share market, where currently Kerry trades at at a for-the-day low of .480 trending down from today's .482 Daily Average/.484 Daily High, while Bush shows currrent trade at for-the-day high .513, trending up from .512 Daily Average/.513 High. Most notable there is the clearly abberational, short-lived Kerry spike of yesterday - both volume and price were improbably above the mean deviation, and more likely evidence of unsustainable manipulation than of momentum shift.

Rasmussen today shows Bush today at 50%, the first time this year either candidate has achieved that milepoint, with the entire sample Pre-Second-Debate. Bush is up 2 points since Oct 5th with consistent positve trend, while Kerry, at 46%, is off a point on consistent negative trend for the same period. Likewise, Bush's Job Approval stands at a for-the-month high of 53.3%, with Disapproval a likewise for-the-month low of 46.2%, a very positive 7.1-to-the-good spread.

X is never Y whether equal to it or not.

And thank God for that.