Poll: Bush's position against Kerry stre ngthens

“NBC Poll:

two way race
Kerry:54%
Bush:43%

three way race
Kerry:49%
Bush:41%
Nader:4%




CBS Poll:

Kerry:49%
Bush:44%




USA Today Poll:

likely voters
Kerry:50%
Bush:45%
Nader:2%

registered voters
Kerry:50%
Bush:42%
Nader:4%

national adults
Kerry:49%
Bush:41%
Nader:5%”

“Keep countin' them chickens before they're hatched. You disapointment will be all the sweeter! :)”

“The latest survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, conducted July 8-18 among 2,009 adults (1,568 registered voters), shows that while the race remains tight, Kerry has made a notable improvement in his standing in the battleground states. Kerry currently holds a small 47%-41% edge in these states; last month, Bush was ahead by 11 points (49%-38%).”

“Gosh, I am sorry I missed your post last month Violin when Bush was ahead by 11 points.

Oops, no I did not miss it. You selected some other poll to show Kerry ahead, this poll does not count until it counts the way you think it should.”

“yup, Arizona is one of those states. Looks like it will see-saw for the next 4 months to me. The circus continues......

Our latest poll shows Kerry ahead, and that men and women are not slanting differently on any questions, like when the beheadings were being talked about incessantly last month.(Women were more likely to vote against Bush because of the beheadings)”

“what is the margin of error on this poll?”

“It's interesting that the poll shoes Nader's support dropping from 6% to 3% - the open support of some far right groups may be dissuading some potential Nader voters.”

“It should. They're just supporting him to draw votes away from Kerry.”

“It's veeeeery close in Ohio. However, we will win.”

“Nader will not obtain the number of votes he did in 2000. The support from the right-wing nut jobs is going to hurt him.”

“I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth”

“laqtis: the sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.”

“Ha!”

“A Princeton University professor has calculated that counting the last six polls the current probability of a Kerry win is 98 percent. Counting only the last three polls the probability is 99.98 percent.”

“Day after day, alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see he’s just a fool
And he never gives an answer.”

“So why did Bush, not Kerry, get the bounce?

By Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — There was a bounce after last week's Democratic National Convention.
But it went to President Bush, not John Kerry.

Pollsters and strategists are puzzling over Kerry's failure to get a boost from a convention that even critics acknowledged went almost precisely as planned. Polls show it improved voters' impressions of Kerry as a strong leader and a potential commander in chief. It burnished views of the Democratic Party.

Still, in the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, Kerry's support dipped 2 percentage points among likely voters compared with a poll taken the week before the convention. Bush's standing rose 5 percentage points. (Related story: Poll results )

Those changes aren't huge, and the survey has a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points for the sample of 1,129 likely voters. But the direction they signal raises questions about a contest that continues to defy political assumptions.

Republicans were delighted. Bush strategist Matthew Dowd dubbed it an oxymoronic "negative bounce."

Democrats were dismissive. "We're extremely pleased with where John Kerry and John Edwards are," Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry's campaign manager, said Monday.

Two other post-convention polls released Monday also showed Kerry failing to get the traditional boost from the convention. One showed his support unchanged; the other had him up 3 percentage points among likely voters. Neither found Bush gaining ground.

Some of the same voices who confidently predicted at least a modest bounce for Kerry last week suggested theories for why that didn't happen: The Democrats miscalculated by limiting the partisan bashing of Bush. Or perhaps in this polarized electorate there's simply no one left to persuade. Or Kerry could still benefit from a delayed bounce.

Or it could reflect fallout of the terrorist threat in the first presidential election since the 9/11 attacks. Bush's resolute response has created a foundation for him that so far hasn't been shaken by concerns about the war in Iraq and the state of the economy.

The convention was followed in short order by new warnings about possible al-Qaeda attacks on financial institutions in Washington, New York and New Jersey.

Kelly DeMarco, 34, a homemaker from Darien, Conn., who was called in the poll, was impressed by what she saw on TV from the convention. "Kerry did very well," she says. "His daughters were excellent. I was really impressed with his family. I liked the points he made about how he would handle things in Iraq" and on education.

She sounds like a Kerry supporter. But she's backing Bush.

"I'm not sure he has enough fortitude to act when necessary," she says of Kerry. "I do believe that is an attribute Bush has over him."

Sea of tranquility

Since polling became a routine part of politics, the only other candidate who failed to see any improvement in his standing after the convention that nominated him was George McGovern in 1972.

That year, Democrats fought bitterly over credentials and the platform. Their convention in Miami Beach was so chaotic that the candidate didn't deliver his acceptance speech until well after midnight.

This time, the Democratic convention in Boston was a sea of tranquility. With an emphasis on Kerry's biography, particularly his service in Vietnam, the convention succeeded in improving his image on almost every front, the poll shows. He boosted his standing as a candidate who is optimistic, honest, trustworthy and caring.

The ingredients were carefully chosen, the recipe time-tested. So why didn't the cake rise?

Among the theories:

•There's no one left to persuade. More than three of four voters say they've given the election "quite a lot" of thought; nearly nine of 10 say their minds are firmly made up. Those are levels of interest and certainty that usually aren't seen until a week or two before the election. "People have their guns drawn," says Andrew Kohut, director of the non-partisan Pew Research Center. "There's a smaller swing vote."

Democrats already had consolidated behind the nominee, which typically happens at the convention. "Kerry got the traditional convention bounce," Democratic consultant Steve Murphy says. "He got it back in March, when he became the nominee."

•Republicans responded more than Democrats. After the convention, the number of Republicans who said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting spiked by 11 percentage points, to 62%. For Democrats the increase was 5 points, to 73%). Political observers couldn't remember another time when a convention excited more loyalists in the other party than in its own.

The fact that more Democrats are fired up at this point than Republicans isn't necessarily good news for Kerry. There's more maneuvering room for Republicans to gin up their base — and they still have their convention to do that.

•There wasn't enough red meat on the menu. The Kerry campaign tamped down direct criticism of Bush, fearing that harsh convention rhetoric would repel swing voters. One result: Kerry's ratings went up, but Bush's ratings didn't go down significantly.

Bush's approval rating fell just 1 percentage point, to 48%. The percentage who said Bush has the personality and leadership qualities needed to be president stayed the same at 55%. Those who said they agreed with Bush on the issues that matter to them stayed precisely the same.

"What they didn't really do was clear contrast" with Bush, says Democratic pollster Doug Schoen. "All the contrasts that were made were inferential. There wasn't anybody who said: 'Here's the problem. Here's what we're going to do differently.' " Some Democrats now will press Kerry to take a harder line.

Republicans already have made it clear they won't repeat the Democratic strategy. Criticism of Kerry, especially of his career in the Senate, is expected to be a major component of the Republican convention, though that approach carries its own risks.

•Bush fares better by comparison. Voters already knew a lot about Bush. After the convention, they also knew more about Kerry. Dowd says that makes it easier for them to decide to support Bush even if they see some flaws in him.

"They have a better reference point to compare Bush to," the Bush strategist says.

•Kerry failed to specify what he would do about Iraq. A 52% majority still says that Kerry doesn't have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq, down only slightly from 56% before the convention. Just 38% say Kerry has a clear plan, compared with 42% for Bush. That makes it more difficult for Kerry to capitalize on the political vulnerabilities Bush faces stemming from the war.

In Boston, Democrats didn't blast the decision to invade Iraq, in part because Kerry voted to authorize the war. The percentage of voters who say it was a mistake to go to war actually dropped after the convention, to 47% compared with 50% before.

"He hasn't presented how he would do things differently," says Brooke Fox, 40, a natural resource policy consultant from Windsor, Colo., who was among those surveyed. "How is he going to persuade the international community to get on board? What he has said are platitudes."

•The poll is wrong. David Wade, Kerry's press secretary, calls the USA TODAY poll "an aberration." Because the results were a surprise, USA TODAY extended the survey an additional night, to Sunday, to create a larger and more reliable sample.

The survey showed that Kerry's best night — and Bush's worst — was on Friday, the day after Kerry's well-received speech to the convention. Kerry's support among registered voters was 49%, Bush 48%. But Kerry dipped to 44% on Saturday; he was at 46% on Sunday. Bush's support rose to 54% on Saturday, 53% on Sunday.

Two other post-convention surveys were released on Monday.

A CBS News poll taken Thursday through Sunday showed no convention bounce for Kerry. His support stayed at 49%, the same as before the convention. Bush went down 1 point, to 43%.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll, taken Friday through Sunday, showed Kerry with what they characterized as a "a tepid bump." He gained 4 points among registered voters, 3 points among likely voters. Bush lost 4 points among registered voters, 1 point among likely voters.

•The bounce will come later. Some analysts suggest that the convention laid the foundation for Kerry to gain ground later. "On national-security issues, Iraq, values — there was substantial movement for us," says Mark Mellman, Kerry's pollster. "Honestly, that was what we were trying to get out of the convention."

Voters who now see Kerry as a stronger, more appealing leader may be easier to win over as the campaign continues.

Cahill says the feeling by a majority of voters that the country has gotten off on the "wrong track" should be seen as problematic for Bush.

"I think he did great at the convention," Charles Wassler, 87, a retired construction worker from Barefoot Bay, Florida, says of Kerry. He liked what Kerry had to say about the economy, health care and Iraq. "He has more experience and will build a coalition to get all the countries fighting terror. That's not what's happening now."

Another Bush bounce?

Kerry dismisses the polls.

"None of that means anything right now," he said Monday in an interview on CNN. "All of these polls are so wacky because, frankly, they don't know what the political dynamic is this year. That's number one. Number two, I don't pay attention to polls. If I paid attention to polls, I would have stopped getting up in the morning last December," when his campaign seemed to be on its last legs.

But analysts see the "bounce" as important because the political conventions are the clearest shot a candidate gets during a campaign to make his case to voters. In a prepared speech, before a cheering audience, he can explain who he is and what he would do as president. In the past three decades, convention bounces have ranged from 3 points to 16.

Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe predicted before the convention that Kerry would jump to a lead of 8 to 12 percentage points afterwards. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who chaired the convention, forecast a bounce of 5 points.

Now the question becomes: Will Bush get a bounce at the Republican National Convention?

That depends in part on why Kerry failed to get one now. If it was a result of Democratic miscalculations — the decision not to bash Bush, the failure to outline specific plans in Iraq — then Bush may fare better. For the record, Dowd, chief strategist of Bush's campaign, predicts he will get a boost.

If it's because voters no longer use conventions to make up their minds, then Bush may have the same fate.

Check back in five weeks.”

“No no no! You are dead wrong! Buddha Bear told me Kerry DID get a bounce. He is always right and never wrong. I don't care that the link he gave to prove his point actually proved I was right we can't go phucking with the fabric of reality. So you HAVE to be wrong for him to be right. Sorry.

Then again, BB is probably lying to me.”

“Well, Manuka, from what I read, it sounds like the RNC is going to be one hell of a Kerry bashing event and nothing more(except for some of the puke inducing tributes that will surface). So, if the negativity of the convention becomes the real reason Kerry didn't get a bounce and Bush will, then that does say something about us as a society, doesn't it? Like we all full of sh_t when we say that we are sick and tired of mud slinging...”

“STRATFOR isn't usually very insightful about domestic politics, but this time I think they nailed it:

The Democratic convention reflected Kerry's strategic problem: His core
base of support is built around Michael Moore Democrats -- voters who
have been utterly alienated by Bush. Like Clinton-haters, these voters
intensely personalize the election and are extremely suspicious of any
move that Kerry makes that appears to be buying into any Bush position.
This is an extremely volatile base that can bleed off rapidly if it
concludes that Kerry is a Bush clone -- they can move toward Nader or
stay at home. Kerry has to hold this base -- but if he merely holds
this segment, he loses. He must pick up another 6 percent. But that 6
percent dislikes the stridency of the Democratic left. They are open to
the view that Kerry is more competent in carrying out Bush's policies,
but not to a repudiation of those policies outright. Kerry could not
find a way to reconcile his two needs at the convention.


What the weekend has shown is that Bush can remain fairly passive. The
dynamic works against Kerry, whose challenge will be to figure out a
way to keep his voters locked in while moving to the center. We don't
think we are exaggerating when we say the success of Michael Moore's
vision of George W. Bush may have done more than anything else to help
his re-election. By fueling the most extreme vision of Bush among
Kerry's support base, Moore deprived Kerry of much room for maneuver.
If Bush is the monster Moore portrays him to be, anything less than
absolute opposition is unacceptable among Kerry supporters. If all
Kerry has to offer is absolute opposition, Bush wins. Kerry will have
to reshape the psychology of his base, which will not be easy to do.
”

“sorry for the formatting”

“I think that there is a lot of over-analyzing about the convention. After all, a partisan convention is hardly the tell-all of the fate of an election. The analyses of the DNC are becoming a bit ridiculous. The convention serves its purpose and then it winds down to other events (hopefully more issue oriented debate like events, but usually to negative mudslinging aside from that). The conventions are simply to accept a nomination and are nothing more than partisan pep rallies to glorify whatever virtues the candidates supposedly have. If they were meant for more than that, perhaps they would hold them closer to the election.”

“I agree Tree. As geo and I discussed yesterday it’s all about the undecideds. The pollsters make it sound like we sit at home watching the polls and as soon as one side moves ahead we are going to change our vote so we can join the winning side at the time. Utter bullchit. I think there are very few are sitting on the fence like there’s this mass of democrats who are playing a wait and see game until the convention.”

“The country is verrrrrrry polarized right now. I don't know how this woll translate in the coming three months, but I am guessing that there are so many people who have their monds made up right now, that the traditional patterns of past elections very well may not apply this time around.”

“You have to admit, stratfor is dead on with this one. Not that the blissninnies would admit it.”

“I don’t think this polarization is such a negative thing. It just means that people know what they want from their man in Washington and they have picked him. The choices are limited yet pretty clear, are they not? Short of a candidate taking a bullet to the head or he gets caught phucking his daughter, there won’t be hardly any shifting I would think. I don’t even think an upcoming terrorist attack ala Spain will effect it much. Those on the right will galvanize to their position saying, “We need to keep Bush to handle this!”, and the left will galvanize to their position saying, “See? We are no safer!”.

For all our bluster and scrambling things are pretty set in stone from here on out. We just have to hope the dumbasses in Florida don’t phuck things up again cause it’s gonna be a close one baby!”

“

ABC/Washington Post Poll

Registered voters:
7/22-7/25: Bush (48%) Kerry (46%)
7/30-8/1 : Bush (44%) Kerry (50%)

= 8% bump for Kerry

CBS News Poll

7/11-7/15: Bush (42%) Kerry (45%)
7/30-8/1 : Bush (43%) Kerry (48%)

= 2% bump for Kerry

Newsweek Poll

7/8-7/9 : Bush (44%) Kerry (47%)
7/29-7/30: Bush (42%) Kerry (49%)

= 4% bump for Kerry

Zogby Poll

7/6-7/7 : Bush (46%) Kerry (48%)
7/26-7/29: Bush (43%) Kerry (48%)

= 3% bump for Kerry

American Research Group Poll

7/1-7/3 : Bush (45%) Kerry (49%)
7/30-8/1 : Bush (46%) Kerry (49%)

1% bump for Bush

CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll

among registered voters:

7/19-7/21: Bush (45%) Kerry (49%)
7/30-7/31: Bush (47%) Kerry (50%)

= 1% bump for Bush


If you average this out, the polls clearly indicate at least a 2.5% bounce for Kerry after the convention.

Spoiled by the facts again!”

“Kegger at Manuka's?!”

“Buddha's political nerve always seems to be soothed by the thought of beer.”

“As for me:

Politics Fun.

Beer Better.

Beer and Boobs Best.”

“otherwise life would be unbeerable”

“I love the majority of the undecided base: clueless, thirty-somethings, mostly Hispanic women, who care more about shopping than politics.

It's going to be a challenge on both sides to pander to this group...”

“AN issue we can all agree upon.... beer & boobs are the best!

Manuka for President!

(well, with that platform he should at least see a "bounce" (excuse pun) in the polls).”

“Yes, Buddha! But, it takes buoyancy to remain afloat!”

“errr, Bison for president!

Screw it, I'm undecided, those latin honey's are HOT!”

“That's awfully politically incorrect for the left rosey, I assume you didn't run that one by the Kerry campaign or the DNC.”

“Beer, Boobs and Bush!

(Whoa, how long till that get's pulled.)”

“I think the problem with the Dem's convention was that it was too staged, that it was unconvincing. Weak media coverage of the convention (only 3 hours on the major channels) also hurt.

My wife works with an Armenian who lived in the Soviet Union until it broke up. He said that he and his wife kept laughing watching the DNC - it seemed so Soviet to them.

I think Bush is the worst president in my life time, probably the worst since Hoover - but the DNC was staged like an awards show. There were some bright spots. I thought Max Cleland was great. Al Sharpton at least showed some energy and charisma. Billy's speech was a brilliant piece of poli-ticking. Kerry's was well done, despite a hoaky opening. I thought Obamma's speech was empty... and the walk on music for the speakers was annoying.”

“ya just lost my vote, so much for bi-partisanship (excuse pun).”

“But, Ped. These things have a history of hokieness to them. I don't remember ever seeing one that wasn't!”

“Looks like they're trying to get Keyes to run against Obama. Now if we could get Keyes and Sharpton to run against each other... That would be some good TV. There aren't enough air conditioners in the world to counteract the hot air that would be blown into that debate venue.”

“Alexandra Kerry gave quite a rousing (excuse pun) speech.”

“Bison
"ya just lost my vote, so much for bi-partisanship (excuse pun)."
Buddha Bear
11:17:07 AM
08/03/04

Oh, you thought when I said Bush I was referring to the candidate.

:)”

“Funny how Susan Page omitted the Newsweek Poll that showed a 7 point Kerry bounce after his speech.

I guess that one didn't fit her script.

Since the networks did such a miserable job covering the convention on our airwaves, you can watch the video at c-span.org.”

“Not our airwaves since 1996.....”

“Well we still own them (or am I wrong?), we just don't get anything out of the deal.

BTW, none other than Ted Turner wrote an interseting piece in Washington Monthly: My Beef With Big Media.”

““If you average this out, the polls clearly indicate at least a 2.5% bounce for Kerry after the convention.

Spoiled by the facts again!"

Sorry Buddha but you can’t go changing the facts you present just because you get busted lying on them. I used your own source to prove you wrong. What? If the source doesn’t say what you want you go find some that do? What a spinner. And besides, once again and again, 2.5% isn’t even outside the margin for error.

Face it Buddha, you got bested by the very one you run around calling ignorant and stupid. Own it…”

“The latest USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll shows Buck Forester® will vote for George W. Bush. Margin of error EL ZIPPO. NADA. ZILCH. +/- 0.”