New Time Poll Has Race Tied

[swag]

www.emergingdemocraticmajority.com

October 17, 2004

New Time Poll Has Race Tied

The new Time poll, conducted October 14-15, has the race tied 46-46 in a 2-way RV matchup. That's pretty bad for an incumbent seeking re-election, but the rest of the poll has even worse news.

Start with the debates. The poll confirms that voters see Kerry as the winner of the final debate (37-28), though not by the crushin g margin of the first debate (59-23). But when asked to consider all three presidential debates, voters do indeed see Kerry as the victor by a crushing margin, 57-27.

Moreover, voters give Kerry very high marks on specific aspects of the last debate, despite the fact that they were less likely to see him as the overall winner. This presumably reflects the extent to which (positive) impressions of Kerry are settling in voters' minds.

For example, by 49-40 voters thought Kerry, rather than Bush, had the best understanding of the issues. That's actually better than after the first debate, when voters saw the candidates tied on this attribute.

. . . much more of a very interesting article by Teixeira

[Birthmark]

1. No, no, no.

Bush is up 52-44, so says Gallup. Of course, next week they'll have Bush ahead 62-44 - then I'll *really* get suspicious. lol

[Doosh]

2. finally, some sanity

[swag]

4. No need to pee pants about an idiotic CNN tracking poll

When we have many polls saying essentially the same thing: the race is deadlocked within MOE and what will win it for Kerry is a huge voter turnout.

[Doosh]

5. this shows Kerry has the momentum

The gap is closing in rasmussen & zogby, this shows kerry with some tailwind, officially moving into a tie. If it's tied on election day, kerry will win nationally by at least 3 points.

[swag]

7. I agree, (though maybe not with margin); so does pollster Guy Molyneaux:

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8694

"However, in incumbent elections, the incumbent’s percentage of the vote is a far better indicator of the state of the race than the spread. In fact, the percentage of the vote an incumbent president receives in surveys is an extraordinarily accurate predictor of the percentage he will receive on election day -- even though the survey results also include a pool of undecided voters. Hence the 50-percent rule: An incumbent who fails to poll above 50 percent is in grave jeopardy of losing his job."

CNN's bizarre and born-to-be-wobbly tracking poll notwithstanding, Bush is consistently polling in the 46% range. He is in serious trouble.

[Doosh]

3. consider all 3 debates, Kerry wins 57-27, DEVASTATING!

[NewYorkerfromMass]

6. Time and Zogby both agree that Bush only has 46% support

this is great news

[swag]

8. Yeah, and Newsweek's topline numbers are similar,

as are the Economist's results and others. It's neck and neck, but with Bush consistently polling below 50, it's hard to see how Bush could win at this point.

I'll buy 46% - 47%. Bush has been stuck there consistently, and has had no luck breaking beyond it.