of course, all polls are just snapshots, and it's along way 'til november, but the latest NYTimes/CBS and Quinnipac polls have some encouraging news for Bush. The times poll correctly states Bush's lead is w/in the margin of error, but fails to note that these numbers represent a reversal of the scenario from last month's poll. The quinnipac poll highlights the impact of the nader candidacy on the race in pennsylvania which gore barely won in 2000. nader's candidacy gives the state to bush. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/p...&en=cbf14e4d4270985d&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x10604.xml -- Already, most voters think Mr. Kerry is a politician who says what people want to hear, the poll found, rather than what he believes — the line of attack Mr. Bush has used against him in speeches. At the same time, there is sweeping concern among Americans about the president’s economic policies, including his ability to create jobs and the effectiveness of his tax cuts, according to the poll. Perhaps most significant for Mr. Bush, the number of Americans who think that the nation is heading in the wrong direction is now 54 percent, as high as it has been in his presidency. The Times/CBS News poll offered the latest evidence that the race for president was as tight as has long been predicted. Even after two weeks in which Mr. Bush has run televised advertisements promoting himself and attacking Mr. Kerry, and in which Mr. Kerry has enjoyed the glow of favorable coverage that greeted his near-sweep of Democratic primaries, the two men are effectively tied, with 46 percent of voters saying they supported Mr. Bush and 43 percent backing Mr. Kerry. The candidacy of Ralph Nader looms as a potentially lethal threat to Democratic hopes of regaining the White House: With Mr. Nader in the race, Mr. Bush leads Mr. Kerry by 46 percent to 38 percent, with Mr. Nader drawing 7 percent of the votes. In a sign of the polarized electorate Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry are facing, three-quarters of supporters of each candidate asserted they would not change their mind before the election. The nationwide telephone poll of 1,206 adults, including 984 registered voters, was taken from last Wednesday through Sunday. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. -- Pennsylvania is shaping up once again as a critical state in the Presidential race as voters give 44 percent to President George W. Bush, 40 percent to Democratic challenger John Kerry and 7 percent to independent candidate Ralph Nader, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. In a head-to-head race, without Nader, Kerry gets 45 percent to President Bush’s 44 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
While the second poll is interesting, the first poll measures popular vote, which matters a lot, just ask President Gore... Huh, what? oh ya....
i agree that the popular vote is meaningless. what's interesting though is the change in voter preference since the last poll. there's at least a 6 point swing in Bush's favor.
Well after spending $18 million in two weeks on attack ads Jr better have a bump in the polls or he has got a major problem.
Every political consultant I've read on the web (from both sides of the political fence) agrees that this is going to be a tight race - no landslides either way. Some are predicting a race as close as 2000. The irony is that Nader can again be the difference in the election if he can get on the ballot in all 50 states which is pretty unlikely at this point. Not even one of the fringe parties has agreed to take him on knowing what could happen. A lot can change between now and November. I think the debates will be interesting. If Edwards gets the nod for VP, I will be dying to see he and Cheney lace 'em up and go at it.
agreed, the election will be a dead heat. one of the more amazing statistics i read in the current polls is something like 75% of respondents said they were not open to changing their minds before the election, so there are remarkably few votes actually in play. edwards v chenet would be extremely interesting. i know to most liberals he's the anti-christ, but nevertheless he' sextremely smart, articulate, calm, forceful, and he doesn't get rattled. edwards is extremely impassioned, articulate, but he can get caught short on issues occasionally as we saw in the NH debate. it'd be alot of fun. kerry would need to rein in his inner Gore to avoid looking like a bully.
Of course, Kerry and the other Demorcrats had quite a few months to throw mud at Bush without any response from Bush.
Sigh... I guess when Democrats attack Bush it's "telling the truth" but when Bush attacks the Demorcrats its lying. Whatever. When will you realize that most all politicians are lying sacks of *#$%. Someone pointed out that Bush may have received a bump in the polls because he's been attacking Kerry. My point was that the Democrats have been attacking Bush (with no counters from Bush) for the past six months during the primaries which probably accounted for Kerry's bump.
Well the difference is that when the Dems attack Bush there is plenty of evidence to back what they say. When the Bush administration attacks Kerry, their adds are shown to be misleading by the use of FACTS. Just because the GOP is playing the game, doesn't mean they are good at it.
Here's a question for Bush supporters. When those against Bush point out things like Bush's flip flop on Nation Building, or the Patriot act or whatever, it seems that 9/11 changed everything. That makes it ok. But for some reason it only changed everything for Bush. Kerry can still be held acountable for pre 9/11 positions, post 9/11. It doesn't matter even if the GOP attacks are later shown to be without merit, the intent is still there. And it still comes down to 9/11 changed everything for the GOP, but for Kerry none of it happened.
That was me. And I'll say it again. After $18 million in ads in that last two weeks we are in a statistical dead heat. The next eight months should be interesting. Oh and name one time where Kerry has mislead people in an ad. Just one.
You really think that 6 months worth of attacks broadcast across the entire nation is the same as two weeks worth of adds in selected markets? I can't do that because I haven't seen any Kerry ads. He hasn't run any in Texas (that I've seen at least). For that matter, I haven't seen any Bush ads.
Kerry's flip flops are really inconsistant. He voted for the attack on Iraq and says we have to "go the distance" but then votes against the money to keep troops there. Now he's saying that he's against the attack on Iraq. It doesn't make any sense and on the surface seems very politically oportunistic.
Chase here's a link to all of kerry's ads http://www.johnkerry.com/videos/console.php?video=022704_word#022704_word He's spent about 1.8 million on ads during the whole democratic primary.
That's fine. But almost the entire Demorcratic primary was people bashing Bush. So, you had the equivelent of 6 months worth of anti-Bush ads (with no truth detector - remember what's his name saying he thought Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened?) vs. a couple of weeks worth of pro-Bush ads. Even though Kerry specifically didn't fund all the ads or spewed all the attacks he certainly benefited from them as they painted a negative portrait of his main rival. So, back to my original point. You think they are "even" now?
