Hi Everyone,
The post-RNC polls are coming out and they show some interesting things not only about how voters are thinking about the election but about how the press is reporting it.
First a summary of the polls:
Time poll has Bush leading 53 to 43 (previous Time poll had Bush leading Bush and Kerry tied at 46)
Newsweek has Bush leading 54 to 43 (Previous Newsweek poll not available on summary chart on pollingreport.com)
Zogby has Bush leading 46 to 44 (Previous Zogby poll not available on summary chart on pollingreport.com)
American Research Group has Kerry leading 46 to 45 (Previous ARG poll had Kerry leading 49 to 45).
The post RNC state by state polls (the only ones that really matter) haven't started coming out yet. It could very well be the case that the bounce in the national polls is due to increased support in states already solidly behind Bush.
Zogby's summary report of the post RNC "bounce" is that undecideds who had been leaning towards Kerry were now firmly undecided again. Also some voters who had been supporting Kerry are now undecided. In past postings and comments I've said that I believe that negative ads have the effect of depressing turnout among undecided voters. This is because while it can convince people that the victim candidate is undesirable, it doesn't convince them to vote for the perpetrator. Zogby's analysis presents a similar view of the most recent polls. This means that it is now up to Kerry to restate his case for his candidacy while at the same time decoupling undecided from Bush by attacking Bush. This is the point in the campaign where Dukakis failed miserably. Early indications are that Kerry's campaign is at least not going to do what Dukakis did (i.e. nothing).
The press is reporting mainly the Time and Newsweek polls which are probably outliers but fits better with screaming head formating on the talk shows. Zogby and ARG have been more consistently in the middle of the varied poll results but their less dramatic numbers are not getting air time. This means that what might be a modest 4 point bounce for Bush is being reported like a 10 point bounce.
Sunday, September 05, 2004
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Posted by Raised By Republicans at 9:41 AM
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3 comments:
Hm. Sounds like wishful thinking to me, RbR. It's hard to believe that out of four polls, two could be outliers, especially since ARG's polls have been Democrat-leaning. It's also unlikely that all of this new support is in solid Bush states. The only silver lining for Dems is that Zogby's polls are generally the most accurate.
Again, we'll have to wait for a couple weeks. Once the dust settles we'll see more clearly.
On the other hand, we have this, from electoral-vote.com:
Rasmussen has started publishing a 3-day rolling average every day. For Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, (all post-speech), Bush's lead nationally has shrunk to 1.2%. Rasmussen looked at the Time and Newsweek polls we had yesterday and said the samples had too many Republicans in them. When he corrected for this effect, he concluded that the Time and Newsweek data might support the conclusion of a 3% Bush lead, not more. This observation is noteworthy because it is relatively rare when one pollster says that his colleagues blew it.
I told you so. Time and Newsweek are fluff operations. Imagine a poll conducted by Katie Curick and that's what you get.
Even NPR is still only reporting the Time/Newsweek results. If it bleeds it leads.
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