KERRY LEADS ELECTORAL VOTE
Bush 48.8%– 222 EV | Kerry 48.5% – 316 EV
EV without Toss Up states (under 2% margin): Bush 208| Kerry 254| Toss 76
August 31, 2004
Bush has effectively diminished his potential post-Convention bounce by bouncing pre-Convention, jumping into a small lead in the national popular vote for the first time since July 6. As usual, the Electoral Vote analysis trails the Composite Poll as Kerry still holds a small lead with significant movement to toward Bush in many states over the last week. This is also the first time that Kerry has led the electoral vote while trailing the popular vote. That should change by next week.
This week’s analysis includes 43 state polls covering 24 states in our state-by-state weighted average. Although recent polls show Florida may have moved back into the Bush column, the state remains in Kerry’s column by the thinnest of margins of 0.73%. That’s because our analysis still considers polling two weeks ago when Kerry averaged a lead of 6 points. Last week, Bush averaged a lead of 0.5 and this week in Florida Bush leads by an average of 1.3%. Because Bush’s lead is so much smaller than Kerry’s lead from two weeks ago, Kerry holds his lead. As a result of this method of weighting recent polling results, once a state changes colors, you can be sure there’s been an actual shift supported by more than one poll.
Since we began tracking the race on March 8, Bush’s largest leads have been 50.1 to 47.6 on June 29 and 387 to 151 on March 16. Kerry’s largest leads have been 50.5 to 46.9 on August 10 and 321 to 217 on August 17.
FoxNews Opinion Dynamics (Bush 43 | Kerry 44)
Investor’s Business Daily (Bush 43 | Kerry 43)
NBC News / Wall Street Journal (Bush 47 | Kerry 45)
CNN / USA Today / Gallup (Bush 48 | Kerry 46)
Time Mag (Bush 46 | Kerry 44)
ABC News / Washington Pos (Bush 48 | Kerry 48)
LA Times (Bush 47 | Kerry 44)
Rasmussen Week Average (Bush 47 | Kerry 46.1)
Iowa Electronic Vote Share Market (Bush 50 | Kerry 49.2)
Harris (Bush 47 | Kerry 47)
CBS (Bush 45 | Kerry 46)
Rasmussen Week Average (Bush 46.4 | Kerry 47.7)
Iowa Electronic Vote Share Market (Bush 50.1 | Kerry 49.5)
A quick look at how the polls perform week to week, analyzing each pollster variance from the weekly mean. A positive number means the pollster reports a more Bush favorable result, a negative number indicates a more Kerry favorable result. Thus, on average, CBS reports a margin between the candidates that is 1.6 points more in favor of John Kerry than the average of all polls released on the weeks of the CBS release. It is interesting to note where Zogby and Gallup appear, indicating that one is only a bit more of an outlier than the other.
LA Times (-2)
CBS (-1.4)
Zogby (-1.1)
Newsweek (-1.1)
ABC Washington Post (-0.4)
Rasmussen (-0.2)
FoxNews (+0.3)
CNN/USAToday/Gallup (+0.6)
IBD/CSM/TIPP (+0.6)
NBC / WSJ (+2.0)
Ohio
West Virginia
Wisconsin
None
Colorado (Bush)
Florida (Kerry)
Nevada (Bush)
Ohio (Bush)
West Virginia (Bush)
Wisconsin (Bush)
