Vox Populi

[womzilla]

Newsweek Poll, taken Jan 29-30:

"Do you think Iraq actually had banned chemical or biological weapons right before the Iraq War started in March, or not?"

Yes -- 55%
No -- 32%
Don't know -- 13%

"Do you think Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was DIRECTLY involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, or not?"

Was -- 49%
Was Not -- 39%
Don't Know -- 16%

(That latter is almost unchanged from September 2003.)

Quinnipiac, Feb 2:

In possible 2004 presidential matchups, Kerry beats Bush 51%-43%, compared to a 49%-45% percent Bush lead January 26. Bush beats all other Democrats:

* 49-44 percent over Dean, down from 54-38 percent January 26;
* 47-45 percent over Edwards, down from 50-42 percent;
* 48-45 percent over Clark, down from 51-41 percent;
* 49-44 percent over Lieberman, down from 53-39 percent.

Someone on rec.arts.sf.fandom said that a separate CNN poll also showed Kerry beating Rutherford Bush. So that's three polls in the last ten days which agree on that.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

You do realize that these polls are meaningless this far out. There's a large "bloom on the rose" going on with Kerry.

B

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

The "Who Would You Vote For" polls aren'useful as an accurate predictor of how the election will play out, but they're not meaningless. They indicate that more people are, right now, willing to vote Bush out of office. A lot can happen in the next nine months, and there's good reason to believe that even if Bush loses the election that he'll not leave the office.

I actually find the trend in the other matchups more indicative, though: There's no way one could view Lieberman has having gotten a "bounce" from the primaries so far, but even he is doing better against Bush than he was a week ago.

Bush has just made two major attempts in the last month to improve his standing with the voters--the Mars initiative and the State of the Union--and whatever benefit either gave has dissipated completely. His ratings now are worse than they were just before Saddam was captured.

That is what I find "hopeful".