Today's "Good News about the Presidential Polling" post

[womzilla]

Over the last few days, several news venues have announced that Bush had made some small but measurable gains in nationwide opinion polling. An article from Thursday on The Emerging Democratic Majority Weblog gives some reason to believe that this improvement is relatively unimportant. In the "purple states"--the states which, realistically, could go either for Bush or for Kerry, Bush's position has either not improved or has actually worsened since the end of March, and Kerry's position has either stayed stable or improved.

And now check out these just-released findings from the same ABC News poll that contributed to Democrats' anguish about Bush being ahead. According to data in The Hotline... Kerry is ahead of Bush by 4 points in the battleground states (50-46). He's even ahead of Bush by 2 points in these states with Nader thrown into the mix and drawing a ridiculous 7 percent.

Note also that Bush's approval rating in the battleground states is 49 percent, 2 points under his national rating and that his approval rating on the economy in these states is just 41 percent, 3 points under his national rating.

Interestingly, if you look closely at recent Gallup poll results, there are also signs of poor recent Bush performance in battleground states (or, as they call them "purple states"). Their latest poll had Bush ahead overall among likely voters by 5 points. But he is only tied with Kerry in the purple states. Moreover, that represents a 6 point decline for Bush in the purple states compared to Gallup's March 26-28 survey.

One must be cautious about these data, of course, because of sample size and other problems (though note that the ABC News battleground states sample is probably 300 or so, which is a pretty decent size). But they do lead me to a hypothesis about Bush's recent improved performance in trial heat questions. Instead of getting more votes where he needs them--in the battleground states--his posturing is mostly driving up his support in the hardcore red states, where he doesn't need them. If that's true, Democrats should definitely not be intimidated by recent poll results. Bush is preaching to the converted--which can make him look better in a national poll--but he's not winning many new converts where it counts.

Bush is pumping a lot of money into advertising already--he's spent an estimated $50 million in the six weeks since Kerry effectively clinched the nomination. But it's not doing a lot of good in the battleground states.

It would be nice if the wave of terrible news over the last few weeks would make Bush's ardent supporters less supporting. But that's not going to happen. About 40% of the American electorate is going to vote for Bush under almost any likely scenario, just as about 40% is going to vote for Kerry. It's the remaining 20% who will decide the election, and the evidence is that they're leaning Kerryward in the places where it matters.

It's still six and a half months.

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

About 40% of the American electorate is going to vote for Bush under almost any likely scenario, just as about 40% is going to vote for Kerry.

Aren't these numbers more like 20%? Does "electorate" mean "people eligible to vote" or "people who usually vote"? Maybe that's being pedantic, but I wonder if Kerry should concentrate on the 50% who don't usually vote rather than the 10% who do but are undecided. But I'm guessing that's a lot harder (and Kerry's probably not the guy to do it). (Howard Stern is doing his part, (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/12/stern/) but I doubt much of his audience is in the purple states...)

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I was using "electorate" to mean "likely voters", which was indeed a bit sloppy of me. The actual number of eligible voters who vote is 55-60%, by the way, and has been consistent at that level for several elections. Most people who are eligible to vote who don't vote aren't slavering for a chance to vote, either; they feel alienated from the process, for a variety of reasons including active suppression (in the case of many minorities), the pervasive sense that "the system" is broken, or because they've been convinced there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats so there's no point in voting because nothing makes a difference.