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

 
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Jun, 2004 04:57 am
I'm really surprised at how close Michigan has been in state polls. I mean, shouldnt that be a slam dunk for Kerry, if he is to have the slightest chance of winning? Pennsylvania's been even more of a tossup.

On the other hand, who would've thought Virginia would be that competitive, eh? Just two points difference in the last Rasmussen poll!
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Thu 10 Jun, 2004 04:57 am
New LA Times poll, June 5-8, MoE ± 3.

Bush 42 Kerry 48 Nader 4 Someone else/unsure 6
(compared to late March, thats -2 for Bush, +1 for Kerry and +1 for "someone else")

Without Nader in the equation, Bush gets 2% more, Kerry 3% more - again an even spread:

Bush 44 Kerry 51 Someone else/unsure 5
(compared to late March, thats -2 for Bush, +2 for Kerry).

From the NYTimes write-up:

Quote:
Fifty-four percent polled approved of Bush's performance in the war on terror. However, 44 percent approved of his performance on Iraq, a drop since March, when a slight majority supported his efforts in that country.


In other polling news, some recent job ratings:

Gallup, 6/3-6/04, compared to two weeks before:
Approve 49 (+2)
Disapprove 49 (0)

Investor's Business Daily/Christian Science Monitor, 1/1-6/04,
Approve 43
Disapprove 51

Zogby International, June 2-5 (compared to three weeks before):
Excellent/Fair 46 (+4)
Fair/Poor 54 (-4)
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Brand X
 
  1  
Reply Thu 10 Jun, 2004 05:06 am
Quote:
I'm really surprised at how close Michigan has been in state polls. I mean, shouldnt that be a slam dunk for Kerry, if he is to have the slightest chance of winning?


Bush also leads in Ohio, figure that one...
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Thu 10 Jun, 2004 05:29 am
Brand X wrote:
Bush also leads in Ohio, figure that one...


Yeah, he did seem to make a bit of a come-back there last month.

Then again, these latest LA Times results also include a seperate poll on three battleground states, Ohio one of them. It has Kerry ahead again, 45/42. Within the MoE, though.

Its not that this poll skews towards Kerry, either, for the LA Times result for Missouri is Bush 48 Kerry 37 - the highest Bush lead in three months. And for Wisconsin, it has Bush in the lead by two: Bush 44 Kerry 42.
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PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Thu 10 Jun, 2004 07:51 am
Slate magazine also some good analysis coming on battleground states; they began with Missouri last week:

Quote:
Politically, the map of Missouri resembles the nation's: The red-blue divide from the county-by-county map of the 2000 election is marked by blue "coasts" around Kansas City and St. Louis, with a giant, mostly red swath in the middle. The areas outside of the state's two major metropolitan areas are known in politics as "outstate," and just as national politicians in America tend to hail from the South and Midwest, successful statewide politicians in Missouri almost always come from outstate, particularly the southwest. Warren, the former Gephardt pollster, says the perception outstate that Kerry, like Gore, is a "city slicker," could be nearly insurmountable.
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timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Thu 10 Jun, 2004 08:27 am
The results of this week's primary in New Jersey are interesting. Its a declared-party primary state, and the Democrats have a larger registration roll than do the Republicans. Most matchup polls show NJ to be more favorable to Kerry than to Bush. In what appears to have been the lowest primary turnout for the state in recent history, Bush the Younger received over 211,000 votes, while Kerry tallied a bit fewer than 192,000 votes. The Democratic ballot included, along with Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, George Ballard, and Lyndon LaRouche. Factoring in the other Democratic candidates, the total Democratic turnout was still several thousand shy of the Republican turnout. In the 2000 primary, Bush received roughly the same number of votes as this time, while Al Gore pulled nearly double the total won by Kerry this time. Worth noting is that NJ has been the focus of heavy Kerry advertising. If this is any indication, it doesn't bode well for Kerry.
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Thu 10 Jun, 2004 03:28 pm
Another poll came out (they're on a roll after that week of silence), this time from Fox. All numbers compared to three weeks ago. No sign of Bush benefiting from the Reagan thing, oddly enough.

Job rating for Bush
Approve 48 (same)
Disapprove 45 (up 2)

(Note that in almost every single month of Bush's presidency, Fox had the disapproval rate a couple of percentage rates lower than the other polls - see this graph.)

Bush 42% (+2)
Kerry 42% (+2)
Nader 3% (same)
Other/None 13% (-4)

Without Nader, Kerry profits:

Bush 43% (+1)
Kerry 45% (+3)
Other/None 12% (-4)
0 Replies
 
PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Sat 12 Jun, 2004 08:11 am
timber and I already have a little side bet going; one I feel more confident about every day. :wink:

John Kerry leads Bush currently by a 51-39 margin in New Jersey, which coincidentally happens to be the same margin the president leads his Democratic rival in the state of Georgia.

So I would posit that Bush stands as good a chance of winning New Jersey as Kerry does Georgia. Cool

Oh yeah, then there's this, about historical precedent for a Kerry landslide:

Quote:
But there's another possibility, one only now being floated by a few political operatives: 2004 could be a decisive victory for Kerry. The reason to think so is historical. Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent - and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins. If you look at key indicators beyond the neck-and-neck support for the two candidates in the polls - such as high turnout in the early Democratic primaries and the likelihood of a high turnout in November - it seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it's going to be Kerry in a rout.

In the last 25 years, there have been four elections that pitted an incumbent against a challenger - 1980, 1984, 1992 and 1996. In all four, the victor won by a substantial margin in the electoral college. The circumstances of one election hold particular relevance for today: 1980. That year, the country was weathering both tough economic times (the era of "stagflation" - high inflation concurrent with a recession) and frightening foreign policy crises (the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). Indeed, this year Bush is looking unexpectedly like Carter. Though the two presidents differ substantially in personal style (one indecisive and immersed in details, the other resolute but disengaged), they are also curiously similar. Both are religious former Southern governors. Both initially won the presidency by tarring their opponents (Gerald Ford, Al Gore) with the shortcomings of their predecessors (Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton). Like Carter, Bush is vulnerable to being attacked as someone not up to the job of managing impending global crises.

Everyone expected the 1980 election to be very close. In fact, Reagan won with 50.8 percent of the popular vote to Carter's 41 percent (independent John Anderson won 6.6 percent) - which translated into an electoral avalanche of 489 to 49. The race was decided not so much on the public's nascent impressions of the challenger, but on their dissatisfaction with the incumbent.

Nor was Carter's sound defeat an aberration. Quite the opposite. Of the last five incumbent presidents booted from office - Bush I, Carter, Ford, Herbert Hoover, and William Howard Taft - only one was able to garner over 200 electoral votes, and three of these defeated incumbents didn't even cross the 100 electoral-vote threshold: - 1992: 370 (Bill Clinton) to 168 (George H. W. Bush) - 1980: 489 (Ronald Reagan) to 49 (Jimmy Carter) - 1976: 297 (Jimmy Carter) to 240 (Gerald Ford) - 1932: 472 (FDR) to 59 (Herbert Hoover) - 1912: 435 (Woodrow Wilson) to 88 (TR) to 8 (Taft).
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sat 12 Jun, 2004 06:35 pm
Yep, PD. Two poll-related problems that were identified with the theory Bush is going Carter's way, though, as observed here before, are:

- Carter's job approval actually fell to the upper-30s in June. No sign of that happening to Bush yet (mid-40s now).

- Carter suffered from weak support from his own party. GWB's support among Republicans, on the other hand, according to the polls at least, is still mostly strong. It did slump for a little while last month, at least in the battleground Rust Belt states, but seems to have recovered again quickly.

Meanwhile, I added the last batch of polls to the Bush vs Kerry graphs (first ten days of June are over now, after all):

http://home.wanadoo.nl/anepiphany/images/bush-kerry.gif

http://home.wanadoo.nl/anepiphany/images/bush-kerry_average.gif
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Sat 12 Jun, 2004 06:39 pm
Huh.

I know I've said it before but truly I adore those graphs of yours.
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blatham
 
  1  
Reply Sat 12 Jun, 2004 07:28 pm
They are wonderfully pretty. I've actually printed them out and on a saturday night like this one, I'll light up a pipe and just look at nimh's graphs here in the candlelight.
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sat 12 Jun, 2004 07:41 pm
LOL!
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ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Sat 12 Jun, 2004 11:34 pm
I think they're beautiful too, and even would think so - for graphics - if the data was not edging in the direction I want.
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jun, 2004 10:50 am
Yes, I admit the data is part of what makes them so lovely -- if they go in the other direction, my affection would likely wane. Cool ("Stupid graphs!! Go DOWN!! Not up! DOWN!!" <pounding computer>)
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timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jun, 2004 01:10 pm
In June of '88, Dukakis enjoyed a lead in the mid-to-upper-teens across a wide spread of polls, and the media was waxing sycophantic about a sea-change in American Politics, a change set to reverse the cowboy foreign policy and trickle-down economics of the cold, heartless, socially irresponsible, big-business-beholden Reagan era.
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Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jun, 2004 01:36 pm
... and they were right! America did get a president who didn't use his office to push an ideological agenda (which he dismissively called "the vision thing"); who showed competent leadership in times of international crisis, and fiscal responsibility in the face of rising budget deficits.

Oh, how I miss George Bush I !
0 Replies
 
Fedral
 
  1  
Reply Mon 14 Jun, 2004 01:22 pm
Current Presidential Betting Line as of 14JUN04

Regardless of all the polls, charts, graphs and opinions, in my view, the best and most unbiased measure of the odds of one side or the other winning can be found among the bookies (People who have NO political agenda because making money is not a partisan occupation):


Republican Party
8/11


Democratic Party
5/4


BOLD marks current front runner on odds line

Source: Here
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Mon 14 Jun, 2004 02:08 pm
Fedral wrote:
Republican Party
8/11


Democratic Party
5/4


Nothing changed there, then, since the last time you posted the odds (thanks, btw). That was a little over a week ago, so there's no movement whatsoever there, then?

What is the turnover on those bets now, anyway? Are people already betting on these odds in any significant numbers, or does the lack of change merely indicate a degree of disinterest in the whole thing thus far?

Reason I'm asking is also that I'd hazard a guess that a low participation in these bets would make them less meaningful, since they would then only represent the estimation of a relatively small number of people?
0 Replies
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Mon 14 Jun, 2004 02:15 pm
You see, these odds are made with a realistic slant in mind; most people are of only average intelligence (or less), therefore, the odds that Bush will be re-elected are higher.

Cycloptichorn
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McGentrix
 
  1  
Reply Mon 14 Jun, 2004 02:19 pm
How can "most" people be only average intelligence or less?
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