KERRY LEADS, BUT ITS FAR FROM OVER
Bush 47.6% – 217 EV | Kerry 50.7% – 321 EV
EV without Toss Up states (under 2% margin): Bush 211| Kerry 291| Toss 36
Last week I wondered if it was time for the Bush campaign and its supporters to move on to other things. Electing Senators and Congressman. Anticipating the new season of Enterprise. Writing letters to NBC to replace the Bartlet Administration with Tom Selleck as a Republican president.
After all, Bush has now trailed in the Composite Poll every week since July 13 and has only led three times since May 18. And last week, Kerry had his biggest lead, at over 3.5 points. But some guy named Don reminds us on our comment pages: Dukakis was up 17 at this time in the election cycle. History tells us that Bushes gain 25 over Massachusetts paleoliberals from this time to election day. It's always nice to remember history and that Kerry was Dukakis' lieutenant governor.
So, what about history? Gerry Daly talks about Bush's lead over Gore in 2000 at this point between conventions, noting that in his analysis of state polling, Bush led in states worth 346 electoral votes. In case you forgot, it was a bit closer than that as Bush hauled in only 271. In this week's Federal Review analysis, Kerry is not doing as well as the challenger in 2000, with only 321 electoral votes.
So, I thought I'd take a look at the Composite Poll numbers from 2000 (yes, this is the Composite's second election).
At this time in 2000, after Mr. Bush's convention, but before Gore's, Bush led in the Composite Poll by 7.5 points. NBC showed Bush up 3. Gallup had him up 16. Fox, up 3. ABC News, up 8.
But things turned around, Gore got a bump out of his convention, and, Bush rallied, election eve DUI story, and whammo, a close election. So, there's plenty of time left.
Other metrics. No president with an approval rating over 50% at this time in the race has ever lost – Bush is at 51%. No challenger whose supporters were voting more against him than for him has ever won. The President gets reelected if second quarter GDP growth exceeds 2.6%. Second quarter this year is 3.0% (estimate, actually to be released August 27). Ray Fair's model says Bush is a lock, unless his model is more wrong than it's ever been since 1916.
Anyway, there's still the RNC and three debates, so the race is far from over.
Now, the numbers.
CNN/USA Today/Gallup (Bush 48 | Kerry 46)
Zogby (Bush 43 | Kerry 47)
Pew (Bush 45 | Kerry 47)
Rasmussen Week Average (Bush 46.0 | Kerry 48.1)
Iowa Electronic Vote Share Market (Bush 50.1 | Kerry 49.6)
FoxNews / Opinion Dynamics (Bush 43 | Kerry 47)
AP / Ipsos (Bush 45 | Kerry 48)
Investor’s Business Daily (Bush 42 | Kerry 45)
Time (Bush 44 | Kerry 48)
Rasmussen Week Average (Bush 46.4 | Kerry 47.2)
Iowa Electronic Vote Share Market (Bush 50.4 | Kerry 48.8)
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.
CBS (-1.6)
Zogby (-1.1)
Newsweek (-1.1)
ABC Washington Post (-0.3)
Rasmussen (-0.2)
CNN/USAToday/Gallup (+0.5)
FoxNews (+0.5)
IBD/CSM/TIPP (+0.9)
None
Ohio
Arkansas (Bush)
Nevada (Kerry)
Ohio (Kerry)
West Virginia (Kerry)
And I'll go ahead and predict that this will be the highest mark for Kerry in the electoral vote analysis. The numbers will go down from here.
See the maps, graphs and more numbers, and the election simulation.
