Wednesday, August 04, 2004
National Polls=Meaningless. Why is this news?!
Our nation's leading media outlets have been spending considerable time this past week trying to analyze why Kerry didn't get a bigger post-convention bounce in the polls. In one poll, USAToday, Bush actually gained on Kerry after the convention, while in most others he registered modest gains. There are many reasons being tossed about, most focusing on the tightness of this historic race to the finish and the dearth of undecideds at this point.
The one thing few media outlets are saying is that national polls don't mean squat. As everyone should have learned in 2000 (when the loser actually tallied a half-million more votes nationally than his opponent), states elect presidents, not individuals.
That being said, John Zogby's state-by-state polling numbers show at this point a pretty solid Kerry lead, 291-215. Four states, yielding a total of 32 electoral votes, were excluded from the analysis because they were deemed to close to call. Even those of us who are mathematically challenged, however, can see that even if all of those states break TeamBush's way it doesn't look good for W.
David Gopoian wrote a few weeks ago in Salon that the GOP was maxed out. He's a political scientist, so the analysis gets a tad bit wonky, but it is short, largely straightforward and worth checking out. The heart of Gopoian's story is that Bush has gotten about as many potential voters to commit to him as he can at this point given his record and ideology. Kerry, given voter preferences and by virtue of being a somewhat unknown commodity, has more room to maneuver in the fall. Simply put, Kerry has to persuade a few people to move a little bit to get their votes, whereas TeamBush needs to move a significant number of people quite a distance away from their preferences to secure a victory.
Let's also recall that in almost every election late undecideds tend to track heavily toward the challenger and away from the incumbent.
Slate seems to be getting into the act as well now. Will Saletan's piece notes bad omens for the current occupant of the Oval Office. Of course, Saletan is also wise to note that given similar numbers four years ago he, and many others predicted doom for W. and were wrong.
Lastly, the pollster cited at the beginning of this post, John Zogby, ran a small to middling upstart polling organization until 2000, when he was the only one to call the presidential outcome correctly.
Our nation's leading media outlets have been spending considerable time this past week trying to analyze why Kerry didn't get a bigger post-convention bounce in the polls. In one poll, USAToday, Bush actually gained on Kerry after the convention, while in most others he registered modest gains. There are many reasons being tossed about, most focusing on the tightness of this historic race to the finish and the dearth of undecideds at this point.
The one thing few media outlets are saying is that national polls don't mean squat. As everyone should have learned in 2000 (when the loser actually tallied a half-million more votes nationally than his opponent), states elect presidents, not individuals.
That being said, John Zogby's state-by-state polling numbers show at this point a pretty solid Kerry lead, 291-215. Four states, yielding a total of 32 electoral votes, were excluded from the analysis because they were deemed to close to call. Even those of us who are mathematically challenged, however, can see that even if all of those states break TeamBush's way it doesn't look good for W.
David Gopoian wrote a few weeks ago in Salon that the GOP was maxed out. He's a political scientist, so the analysis gets a tad bit wonky, but it is short, largely straightforward and worth checking out. The heart of Gopoian's story is that Bush has gotten about as many potential voters to commit to him as he can at this point given his record and ideology. Kerry, given voter preferences and by virtue of being a somewhat unknown commodity, has more room to maneuver in the fall. Simply put, Kerry has to persuade a few people to move a little bit to get their votes, whereas TeamBush needs to move a significant number of people quite a distance away from their preferences to secure a victory.
Let's also recall that in almost every election late undecideds tend to track heavily toward the challenger and away from the incumbent.
Slate seems to be getting into the act as well now. Will Saletan's piece notes bad omens for the current occupant of the Oval Office. Of course, Saletan is also wise to note that given similar numbers four years ago he, and many others predicted doom for W. and were wrong.
Lastly, the pollster cited at the beginning of this post, John Zogby, ran a small to middling upstart polling organization until 2000, when he was the only one to call the presidential outcome correctly.
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