Majority of Americans Don't Approve of Job Bush is Doing, Say War Was a Mistake.

MacBeth....

Ars est celare artem

 

Veritas!

 

veritas?? que est veritas??

(sorry..i couldn't resist!)

 

that'd be a good motto for kerry, although he manages to be both long-winded and nuanced. no art in that sam.

 

do you really thing stephen hawking couldn't spell: emergling?

 

I've got Bill Clinton's:

Prehende uxorem meam, sis!

 

i've made a clear decision to leave it as emergling...because it's just more fun that way.

que est emergling?

 

B-Bob sent me an email on it a while back....and asked me not to change it. It will remain emergling until such time as I replace the entire sig with a joke about the sufferings of slavery...or maybe something funny about people who died at Hiroshima. I'm always out to get the laugh!!!

 

Hillary's:

Viri sunt Viri!

 

and MacBeth, I think I've found your's

si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus lainis alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes!

 

OK you scholars... back on topic...
_____________

Why the Polls Don't Add Up
By ANDREW KOHUT

WASHINGTON — You can hardly blame the Democrats if they seem a bit confused. After all, as the situation in Iraq has worsened over the past six weeks and national polls have shown a steep decline in President Bush's job-approval ratings (some, including the latest CBS/New York Times survey, have him registering well below the 50 percent mark), John Kerry can't seem to pull ahead of the president the national horse-race polls.

Last week's Gallup, Fox News and NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys — all taken well after the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib — continued to show registered voters split about evenly between the president and the senator. New surveys by CNN/USA Today/Gallup and by my colleagues at the Pew Center did show the senator gaining a small lead, but that edge disappeared in the Gallup poll when the sampling was narrowed from registered voters to "likely" voters, and in the Pew poll when respondents were asked to also consider the candidacy of Ralph Nader.

Understandably, many Democrats have begun to despair — if Mr. Kerry can't gain ground when the president is in trouble, when can he? His defenders suggest that the evenly divided, highly polarized electorate is so dug in that neither candidate can break away. Others attribute Mr. Kerry's lack of progress to the multimillion-dollar Bush advertising blitz in swing states.

These explanations may have some merit, but the data show there is still a sizable independent swing vote that could drive the election one way or the other. And the declines in the senator's favorable ratings have been modest — even in the swing states, where the Bush-Cheney advertising hit him hardest, polls show that most voters still hold positive or neutral views of him.

The real reason that Mr. Kerry is making so little progress is that voters are now focused almost exclusively on the president. This is typical: as an election approaches, voters first decide whether the incumbent deserves re-election; only later do they think about whether it is worth taking a chance on the challenger. There is no reason to expect a one-to-one relationship between public disaffection with the incumbent and an immediate surge in public support for his challenger.

We saw the same dynamic in the 1980 race. President Jimmy Carter's favorable rating in the Gallup surveys sank from 56 percent in January to 38 percent in June, yet he still led Ronald Reagan in Gallup's horse-race measures. For much of the rest of the campaign, voters who disapproved of Mr. Carter couldn't decide whether Mr. Reagan was an acceptable alternative. Through the summer and early fall, the lead changed back and forth, and CBS/New York Times and Gallup polls showed conflicting results — at one point in August, Gallup found Mr. Reagan ahead of President Carter by 16 percentage points, yet just two weeks later it registered a dead heat. It was not until the two men held a televised debate eight days before the election that Ronald Reagan gained legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate.

Similarly, in May 1992 President George H. W. Bush had only a 37 percent approval rating according to a Times Mirror Center survey, but the same poll showed him with a modest lead, 46 percent to 43 percent, over Bill Clinton. Only the Democratic convention and the debates brought about an acceptance of Mr. Clinton (even though his negative ratings were higher than Mr. Kerry's are now). It took a long time for him to be seen as an acceptable alternative to Mr. Bush.

Should the voters' disillusionment with the current President Bush continue, they will evaluate John Kerry and decide whether he is worth a chance. But, as in the past, the focus at this stage is on the man in the White House — and given the events in Iraq, it is unlikely to come off him any time soon. Mr. Kerry's lack of progress should not, for now, be cause for concern to Democrats. Public opinion about Mr. Bush is the far more important barometer — and if it remains low, Mr. Kerry will have a chance to make his case.

 

From The Hill...
___________

Kerry’s legendary lead
Mark Mellman
May 12, 2004

“So Mark, how well is John Kerry doing?”

“Better than any challenger in modern times has ever been doing at this point in this race!”

“You wouldn’t know that from the press spin.”

“Like my mother always said (quoting Santayana), those who do not remember the past are doomed to relive it.”

How does one define “doing well” in the context of polling? As I have written before, polling numbers have no inherent meaning. They only derive meaning from comparisons across time or space.

In the latest Gallup poll, John Kerry leads George Bush by five points among registered voters when Nader is included, and by 6 when he is not. How do we know just how strong a showing that is for Kerry?

Looking at the history of presidential races is one approach. No challenger has ever done as well against an elected incumbent at this point in the cycle. Every incumbent who won re-election had a double-digit lead over his challenger at this stage. Lyndon Johnson led Barry Goldwater by 59 points in the spring of ’64. Bill Clinton led Bob Dole by 14 points, Ronald Reagan led Walter Mondale by 17 and Richard Nixon was ahead of George McGovern by 11.

Of course, some incumbents who went on to lose were doing better than Bush is today. The president’s father led Clinton by six points at this stage but was beaten anyway.

Thus, Kerry’s margin is 11 points better than was Bill Clinton’s at a similar point in time against Bush I. What, you haven’t seen that “Kerry stronger than Clinton” headline?

Only one challenger has ever done as well against an incumbent at a comparable time in the election cycle. Jimmy Carter had a similar six-point lead over the unelected and subsequently defeated Gerald Ford. The nation had just been through the long national nightmare of Watergate and Ford had pardoned Nixon.

I keep referring to “this point in time.” Why? Because campaigns are events that unfold over the course of the cycle. Most of the movement in polls comes in the aftermath of the conventions. Incumbent presidents are the best-known politicians around. Challengers are usually not as well known. Kerry is no exception. Today, many voters are expressing a preference for the Kerry they don’t know over the Bush they do. That is striking. Often, unpopular politicians still lead at this stage.

In September 2000, Bob Torricelli (D) led his opponent by a four-point margin. Just 14 percent of New Jersey voters had a favorable impression of the senator, who had been dragged through the mud by then, while 34 percent were unfavorable. You did not hear too many analysts saying, “Wow, that Torricelli is strong. A year of horrific press and he still leads his opponent.” A few weeks later, rightly convinced he could not win, Torricelli withdrew. As his opponent became better known, the incumbent was likely to suffer.

Indeed, in most races involving incumbents the critical number is not the margin over the challenger but rather the percentage of the vote the incumbent is garnering. As sophisticated poll-watchers know, few incumbents get more votes on Election Day than they do in the last polls. Voters who are undecided at the end break overwhelmingly to the challenger.

With just 44 percent support in both of the two most recent polls, Bush is in real and serious trouble.

Democrats should not be popping champagne corks yet, but our party should be delighted that Kerry is turning in a stronger performance to date than any challenger since the advent of modern polling.

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has worked for Democratic candidates and causes since 1982, including Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) this year.

 

From Ruy Teixeira...
___________

Bush Rating on Iraq Below 40!

I believe this is the first time I've seen this in a public poll: Bush's approval rating on Iraq has been measured below 40 percent. In the latest CBS News poll, conducted May 11, his rating on Iraq clocks in at 39 percent approval/58 percent disapproval (only 37 percent among independents).

Also in the poll, his overall approval rating is down to 44/49 (42/46 among independents) and his approval rating on the economy is now just 34/60 (30/62--more than 2:1 disapproval--among independents). And even his rating on handling the campaign against terrorism is a less than stellar 51 percent.

So, let's see, his overall rating is 44 percent and his average rating in what are probably the top three issue areas--the economy, Iraq and terrorism--is now a dismal 41 percent. Lo how the mighty have fallen.

And, wait, there's more. For the first time, less than 30 percent (29 percent) say the result of the Iraq war was worth the loss of American life and other costs, compared to 64 percent who say it wasn't worth the costs. And among independents, it's now an amazing 3:1 against the war being worth it (69/23).

The poll has a similarly lop-sided result on whether US is in control of the Iraq situation. By 57-31, the public says the US is not in control of events in Iraq, a margin that rises to 59/25 among independents--almost 2:1. The increasing sense of lack of control is probably an important reason for the increasing willingness to turn over control to the Iraqis as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable, rather than keep troops in Iraq as long as necessary (now 55-38 for turning over control, up from dead-even at 46-46 in late April).

Could Bush's ratings on Iraq get any worse? Based on the way things are going, I would have to say that's a very strong possibility.