Why is John Kerry not ahead by 20 points in

[notbush]

the polls?

Bush has had a week maybe 2 of horrible , terrible news.......
The war, consumer confidence......etc.
It still seems to be neck and neck...WHY?
What if Bush has a couple of good weeks?????Will Kerry be down by 20?????

[Doomsayer13]

1. because 40% of America will vote Bush no matter what

Bush could propose nuclear war and they'd vote for him. Welcome to the America of the 21st century.

[Dover]

2. Because Polls are just as easily manipulated as E-Votes.

Don't pay attention to the propaganda.

[tom_paine]

3. You're both right

It is some combination of the two.

[SoCalDem]

4. Because the polls are SHIT..

and the media lies :)

[scottxyz]

5. Because polls lie

Most people don't like murderers.

I bet the real split is 80/20 Kerry/Bush right now.

Polls are really slanted.

[jobycom]

8. Bush Daddy used to say that when he was losing in the polls

He told voters to ignore the "nutty polllsteerrrrss" (hard to capture that wierd word ending thing he did). The side down in the polls always claims the polls are lying. They are almost always right, within a few points. There are slanted polls, but not all of them are. Most show a close race, and I'm sure it still is. If the election were today, Bush would get a lot of votes from people who may not love him but who haven't seen enough of Kerry yet.

[keopeli]

6. A lot will change in the next 6 months. Kerry is wisely planning while Bu

while Bush* spends his campaign funds. Moveon is running ads, and Kerry is saving his funds for the final two months, when moveon is prohibited from running ads. There's nothing else that can be done by Kerry.

If you want to do something, call your Congress and the White House and tell them to impeach Bush* for mismanaging our military who, by the way, are many of our friends and family. And, by next year, it might be some people here at DU who get drafted.

I'm defending Kerry's campaign pause. He has a lot to do, and a short time to get it done.

Keo

[jobycom]

7. People don't change minds that quickly

Those who completely believed in Bush are fighting the realization of what he truly is. They cling to whatever they can. Some will never change. There were people who supported Nixon after he resigned, and who still support Reagan.

It takes a bit of time for it to sink in fully. Bush is becoming a joke, and that image of him is starting to take root, and the friggin' idiot is sitting on his ranch letting it happen. It just takes a little time for people to accept.

He's in a lot of trouble.

The thing that worries me is the whole pig farm vacation. Why is he so quiet, not fighting back? Does he have some magic wand solution waiting? Easter is on the 11th...

[RummyTheDummy]

9. Get back to me in a couple weeks

The way things are going, he just may end up being ahead by 20.

[Lexingtonian]

10. because Bush still has political capital

Not among people like the average DU poster, but with people who have bought into the Right's mythology about what America is, was, and ought to be.

There's a lot of it for swing voters to examine, test, and reject while Bush finds yet another and another bit to obstruct their thinking with on the mental path to voting for simple sanity, i.e. Democratic. "Republicans are stronger on defense" and "Republicans want smaller government, lower taxes, and less spending" and "Republicans are Christians and Democrats are Atheists" and "Reagan won the Cold War" and "Four legs good, two legs bad!". (Ok, that last one is out of a little book by George Orwell.)

The good news is that George W is doing a fire sale on fifty-some years of Republican political capital buildup. The bad news is that it means every time his team scores yet another own goal, he digs out some more of the stuff and the swing voters give him a fresh dose of Benefit Of The Doubt. It gets used up, though, as more facts trickle through. And damnit, W is perfectly shameless and willing to use up every last friggin bit he can find for his own purposes. He's going to run out before Election Day at the present clip.

Basically, W has 45% or 46% of voters biased his way. Another 2% or 3% won't vote for either major party. If Kerry can put all the rest- Democratic leaners and committed Democrats- together, he's got 51% or 52%. Rove is hoping to win on increasing Republican turnout efficiency

[K8-EEE]

11. Because Of That Large Voting Category: THE OSTRICHES!

There is like 30% of the people who use the Sgt. Schultz (from Hogans Heroes) voting method:

I SEE NUTHINK....NUTHINK!!

[JCMach1]

12. Why, take a look at this sampling

Go to the Al Jazeera page

http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage

On the right hand side of the page click on "Faces and voices"

The majority of people are JUST starting to get themselves informed about the issues.

Couple that with the 40 million already spent by * on misinformation... and add to that our enemies in the media and what do you have???

[klyon]

13. Maybe people are unable to admit they were fooled by Bush.

They took strong stands supporting America .... and now need to save face, can't admit they were wrong but know somethin' ain't right in Bushland
hopefully they will vote against Bush when it counts, in the booth.

As long as the media portrays Bush and the likes of Rice(and other insider) as bulletproof to criticism then people will stay fooled.

KL

[snippy]

15. I think you are on the right track about some of his support.

Some people absolutely refuse to admit that Bush has any flaw or has done anything wrong and other people merely resist admitting it. The first group is the the 33% to 40% of people who will suppport any republican regardless of any lies told or crimes committed. These people gladly eat shit when told to by republicans and claim that they really, really like it.

Concerning the people who resist admiting the truth about Bush, most of these people do not follow politics closely, if at all. Bush benfits from three phenomena with this group which all presidents have benefited from. The first is the assumption that he would not be the president if he was not qualified. The second is that since he is the president he must know much more about a given situation than they do. The third is the great reluctance of many people to believe that their president and their country would do evil things.

[mmonk]

14. You must be thinking of a democracy and a free press

and such. People in this country listen to their leaders, stay uninformed, watch reality TV (the unreal kind) and stay consumed over making money and self indulgence.

[aneerkoinos]

16. Because he's pro-war n/t

[TahitiNut]

17. Not really possible at this point, imho.

Come November, there will be 25-30% who vote their major party, no matter what. Even Nixon's (or LBJ's) "reelect" numbers never got below 30-35%. Among the "in-betweeners" there're about 10% whose votes are almost random as a group but individually determined by whatever visceral reaction propels them at the time. These are superficial (including many 'single-issue') voters, whose votes are driven like a Brownian movement. These typically split 5% for each major party but often tilt 8/2% due to pronounced 'bandwagon' forces.

This leaves an array of 30-40% of 'swing' voters. This bloc is diverse. Many of these are people who're 80/20 types ... voting one or the other major party 80% of the time. Of these, the one's on the right are mostly committed to Junior already since he's had no opposition on his side of the ballot and because Kerry is being defined by the right rather than his own media outreach. Of those in this 'middle' group who're aligned on the left, the wounds of the primary have not yet fully healed and many of them poll as undecided or third party. When the rubber eventually hits the road and those wounds have healed, they'll vote Kerry unless the 11th hour Slander is very effective.

It's probably as good as we could expect that Dim Son's reelects are in the mid-to-high 40's at this point. Remember, the "official" (post-convention) campaigns have not yet begun.

(This is just da 'Nut's perspective. YMMV :silly: )