Odd, conservative leaning papers think Bush is in trouble:

[Nicholas_J]

This comes from the Washington Post, and Dick Morris, but he is clearly concerned that with Kerry running so close to BUsh that the election belongs to the opponent and not the incumbent:

DUBYA IN TROUBLE

April 20, 2004 -- BOTH of the polling organizations that track the presidential race in daily surveys have concluded that the contest has settled into a stalemate. Scott Rasmussen reports that for eight of the last nine days, President Bush has gotten 45 to 46 percent of the vote, while Sen. John Kerry ranged from 44 to 46 percent. John Zogby shows Kerry ahead by three and reports little movement either way.
This "tie" is terrible news for the Bush camp.

One of the (very few) immutable laws of politics is that the undecided vote almost always goes against the incumbent. Consider the past seven presidential elections in which an incumbent ran (1964, '72, '76, '80, '84, '92, and '96) - that is, look at the final vote versus the last Gallup or Harris polls. My analysis shows that the challengers (Goldwater, McGovern, Carter, Reagan, Mondale, Perot, Clinton, and Dole) got 85 percent of the undecided vote. Even incumbents who won got only 15 percent of those who reported that they were undecided in the final polls.

So . . . when Bush and Kerry are tied, the challenger really has the upper hand.

More bad news for Bush: Democrats usually grow 2-3 points right before Election Day as downscale voters who have not paid much attention to the election, suddenly tune in and "come home" to their traditional Democratic Party moorings. Remember, virtually every poll (except Zogby) showed Bush slightly ahead of Al Gore as the 2000 election approached - yet Gore outpolled Bush by 500,000 votes.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/22968.htm

[Frangible]

1. good news

Let's hope it holds. I don't want another 4 years of Dubya.

[Richardo]

2. WaPo not often considered "conservative"...

...but I see the URL is for the NY Post, which is as we all know a Murdoch organ (and I don't have to tell you which organ. :evilgrin: )

[prodigal_green]

20. is the

anus considered an organ?

[Frodo]

34. The WashPost is NOT "conservative" (certainly not compared to the ...

...local alternative)

And they endorse almost exclusively Democratic candidates (unless the guy is clearly slimy - like Moran) and editorialize almost exclusively from the left.


But you're right - Morris doesnt' write for the Washington Post. This is NYPost - a very different animal... pseudo-tabloid.

[bluestateguy]

3. Morris usually gives the benefit of the doubt to Bush

and when he doesn't that usually means Baby Bush is in real trouble.

[rockymountaindem]

4. Bwa ha ha ha ha

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, naysayers and trolls.

[Skarbrowe]

9. polls

The latest polls from ABC and USAToday, I believe, have Bush several points ahead of Kerry. The main thing to remember, is that Bush only needs to be even or a couple points behind Kerry to steal another election. If Bush is close to Kerry in the polls, and now Ralph Nader to factor in, it makes it all more plausible for Bush to pull another Election 2000. Kerry would have to be 10 to 20 points ahead of Bush in the polls come November before I could be fairly convinced Bush couldn't get away with stealing votes. If Bush and Kerry are close in most polls in the month of October, Bush is going to steal it, regardless of last minute swing votes.

Skarbrowe

[Richardo]

11. Depends on the Electoral College tally...

I see your point, but Gore won the popular vote in 2000. Polls counting only popularity really don't tell you much at all if you don't know what states the respondents are in.

[Nicholas_J]

17. Right now

The electoral college probablities are switching from Bush to Kerry almost weekly, this week with Bush having 2 more EV since Washington State is now considered too close to call (why is beyong me as last ELdon Poll there has Kerry beating BUsh outside of the MoE of that Poll")Over the last five weeks first Kerry was ahead, then BUsh, then Kerry, then Bush and so on.

But in an election this close the truth is what Morris indicated. At the end of the election, the swing voters come out, and almost always against the incumbent.

[Richardo]

12. ...and welcome to DU, Skarbrowe..

:toast:

[newyawker99]

18. Hi Skarbrowe!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[lancdem]

5. Sometimes Dick Morris acts like a real analyst

and other times like a RW hack. This falls into the former category. I've been saying this for months: Kerry's goal is to stay close as long as possible. That's why Bush spent all that money in March, to try to blow him away. It didn't work.

They key is to look at Dubya's share of the vote in these polls, not Kerry's.

[Cyrano]

6. We'll Win Big

I think there's the possibility that the outrages of the Bush band of thugs will cause enough people to show up and vote to turn the election into a landslide for Kerry. But as Stalin said, "It's not who casts the votes, it's who counts the votes."
The touch screen machines with no paper trail give the bad guys the opportunity to steal another election. And my big fear is they'll do it and get away with it.

[Richardo]

10. Bienvenue to DU, Cyrano...

Le :toast:!

[Hippo_Tron]

15. Welcome to DU Cyrano

You raise a VERY good point and seeing as Kerry has a plan to deal with Florida, I think he has a plan to deal with Diebold but hasn't told anybody about yet.

Et, est-ce que vous etes francais?

[newyawker99]

19. Hi Cyrano!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[sandnsea]

7. Right Before Election Day

Can we get this through our heads? Democrats tune in right before the election. So what we have to do now is lay groundwork. Get all the various interest groups ready to go. Register voters and get their names, phone numbers & email addresses. Organize volunteers.

Be totally ready for the days RIGHT BEFORE ELECTION DAY.

And ride out the ups and downs between now and then.

[RoundRockD]

8. Question about polls.

I'm new to reading polls so I'm not sure what the following excerpt means:

ABC News/Washington Post Poll. April 15-18, 2004. Registered voters nationwide (from a total sample of 1,201 adults). Fieldwork by TNS Intersearch.

www.democrats.com

Does the poll contact 1201 adults and from that sample take out the registered voters and get their reading from them only?

[lancdem]

13. I think that's what they do

[Ediacara]

33. Maybe

The first question asked after, "can I take a few minutes of your time?" is usually, "are you registered to vote in the United States?"

If no, "Are you planning on registering prior to the November presidential election?"

If no, "Thank you for your time, we're polling registered voters, or people planning to register to vote this evening. Again, thanks for your time."

If the answer to either question is yes, THEN they start the real survey. These initial questions are meant to weed out bad sample. I doubt that they're included in the sample size of 1201.

[spooky3]

14. Wa Post is NOT the NY Post.

[Guaranteed]

16. Yeah...that IS good news. nt

[West Coast Democrat]

21. Weren't people whining about Dick's recent article....

saying Kerry was in trouble, and Bush was in for an easy time? What a flip-flopper this guy is!

[Nicholas_J]

22. THis guy was saying Kerry was in trouble

About six weeks to a month ago, hopng that the massive Bush expenditures on smear advertisements would have more of an effect, enough to get Kerry outside of the range that would allow the last minute Democratic surge to put Kerry in a winning position. The ads have not been effective enough to knock Kerry down far enough to assure a Bush win.

In fact, I suspect that the full effects of what is happenning in Iraq to be seen in the current polls, as so far, in observing polls, I have found it takes about a month for anything in the news to percolate fully through public opinion to the degree to have its maximum effects on the polls.

Things are going bad in Iraq. In fact, I am anticipating problems with Syria shortly after the turnover of government in Iraq.

[West Coast Democrat]

23. I agree with you, but Dick Morris is just a hack

so nothing he writes should be taken seriously, even if he writes something we agree with.

[no name no slogan]

25. Not only a hack, but a sympton of what's wrong with politics these days

Dick Morris is a symptom of a deeper cancer on this system: the one that prefers style over substance, that prefers "focus groups" to principled stands, that favors the opinions of Washington politicos over that of common Americans.

Why anybody even pays attention to him anymore is a mystery.

[Nicholas_J]

27. Problem was

He was desperately writing about Kerry's immement crash in March and early April, and his statements are coinciding with the stuff from Pat Robertson's pollsters, which indicate Kerry is just a tad ahead of Bush.

Perhaps they are trying to get their conservative constituents worreid enough to actually vote, but the facts are that there are more registered, voting Democrats in the U.S. and by and large REpublican wins over the last 25 years have been due to a ten to 12 percent defection of Democratic voters who would vote republican or stated they were going to in polls. Now the polls have that reduced to 2 - 3 percent Dems voting Repub, but the the percentage of Republicans who state they will vote Dem has remained relatively stable with as many as 12 percent of Republicans stating they will vote for either Kerry or Nader (its true, about 35 percent of the Nader percentages come from Republicans, twice as many are dems.)

But the historaical data that Morris talks about are correct. If you go to every election with an incumbent running, in the last few weeks the undecided vote turns overwhelmingly against the incumbent.

[West Coast Democrat]

30. He may make sense.......

but this is the guy who predicted Hillary would not run for Senate, and when she did decide to run for Senate, he predicted she would lose to Lazio.

[no name no slogan]

24. Shrub's in serious sh!t right now

although he's statisticly tied with Kerry in some polls, his negatives are VERY high for a "popular" incumbent. Also, among the polling data, most Americans believe that the country is "headed in the wrong direction"-- surely not a good sign for an incumbent president.

I predict that Kerry will be up by ten percent nationwide by August after the convention. The Iraq situation will continue to deteriorate, the "jobless" recovery will continue, and more dirt on Shrub will come out. Even the Repubs NYC convention in August won't give them enough bounce to overcome the solid Democratic lead.

This race is still Kerry's to lose. However, he needs to define himself as different from Bush on ALL fronts: domestically and internationally, too. And we, as liberals and progressives, have to make sure he's not afraid to take left-of-center positions, too, to show that he does have the support he needs.

[Nicholas_J]

28. In every race since Stevenson and Eisenhower

The incumbent usually remained at least ten points ahead of the opposition for almost the entire race with the opponent only closing in during the very last few weeks of the election. Similar stuff happened during the races where the VP of a two term president ran. like Nixon running after Eisenhower. Gore oddly enough was running behind Bush until the last two weeks in 2000.

[eumesmo]

31. This isn't true

I've seen charts of the recent elections, and they didn't look like that. I can't think of a single case where the incumbant held a ten point lead throughout. This didn't even happen in Reagan-Mondale.

This election cycle is unique in that the nomination has been settled so quickly. So it's debateable how much former election cycles will predict what will happen. You can't just look at former cycles where such and such was happening in April and extrapolate to today when before the nomination was still being faught but this time has been decided.

[Nicholas_J]

32. Charts have been placed up here on DU

And the graphic showed even Reagan behind Carter by ten points all the way up until October 1f 1979. They placeed charts for Every rance in which an incumbent president ran, and had polling averages for the entire 10 months prior to the elections and every single race had the incumbent running anywhere from 10 to 15 points ahead of the opponents in every singl race. This stuff was posted about a month ago.

[physioex]

26. Good News...But

Don't break out the Champange Bottles. Shrub and his cronies aren't going to give up soo easy. They have a mighty big war chest close to a quarter billion dollar which cannot be compared to the paltry amout Kerry has rasied in total. Don't get soo elated and contiue the fight....

[GOPBasher]

29. That's reassuring

:)