|
|
Bush opens lead over Kerry
Bush opens lead over Kerry in battleground Nevada
President Bush has opened a lead over Democratic challenger John Kerry in battleground Nevada, according to a statewide poll released Thursday. Bush led Kerry 52 percent to 42 percent in a survey of 625 voters conducted Oct. 14-16 for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The telephone poll by Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. had a sampling error margin of 4 percentage points.
By Las Vegas Review-Journal.
|
|
|
|
|
|
What the polls are telling us
What the polls are telling us
One week after the third and final presidential debate, there are enough post-debate polls to tell us where the election stands today. Here the results are gathered together by realclearpolitics.com. These are for the three-way pairings, plus the two-way pairings by Rasmussen, which doesn't ask a three-way question. Bush's percentages are listed first.
Fox News 49-42
Washington Post/ABC 51-46
Zogby 45-45
TIPP 48-46
CBS News 47-45
CNN/USAT/Gallup 52-44
Time 48-47
Newsweek 50-44
Rasmussen 48-47
Average 49-45
Note that George W. Bush's percentages range from 45 to 52 percent while John Kerry's percentages range from 42 to 47 percent. In only one poll does Bush fall below 47 percent, which is Kerry's highest percentage.It seems highly likely that Bush emerged from the debates a little bit ahead. Some Kerry backers argue that voters who are still undecided are likely to end up voting against the incumbent. But it's also possible that many of these will just not vote. And in any case, Bush is bumping up against the magic number of 50 percent. The debates helped John Kerry but evidently not enough to put him ahead.Of course, these numbers are not etched in stone. They could change over the last two weeks. And John Kerry is close enough that it will take only a shift of a few percentage points to put him ahead. But he is not likely again to speak to as broad an audience as he did at the Democratic National Convention in Boston or the three debates in Miami, St. Louis, and Tempe.
These numbers are something of a rebuke to conventional wisdom. Most political insiders supposed that if Kerry was judged the winner of the three debates he would wind up leading Bush. Most political insiders thought Kerry did win all the debates (I didn't; I thought Bush won the second and the third). But, as with his convention, he didn't get the bounce they expected.
But there is something else that is curious about the numbers in the polls, when viewed over the whole course of the campaign since John Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination on March 2. Blogger Steven Den Beste has prepared an interesting chart. Den Beste charges that pollsters ''deliberately gimmicked'' the results, ''in hopes of helping Kerry.'' I don't agree with that at all. But he has made another interesting observation. Eliminating some of the peaks and valleys of the Bush and Kerry percentages in realclearpolitics.com's average of recent polls, Den Beste shows that Bush's percentages have tended to rise over time while Kerry's have risen much less if at all.
He draws the Bush long-term trend line from a low point around 43 percent in May, when the media were full of stories about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, to higher numbers around 45 percent in July and August, then up to the 49 percent level he has reached today. His long-term Kerry trend line runs through the 44 to 45 percent level in the spring to the 45 to 46 percent level in August, after the Democratic National Convention, to the same 45 to 46 percent level of today.
By A Republican Lapdog
|
|
|
Sen. John Kerry has fallen into
Bush baited his trap and the liberal walked in
Sen. John Kerry has fallen into a trap.
As the debate in the presidential race shifted from Iraq to domestic issues, driven by the topic chosen for the third debate, the Massachusetts Democrat moved further and further to the left, boasting of a ?“plan?” to save Social Security, another to protect and extend Medicare, a third to cover all Americans with health insurance, and one more to create new jobs and stop outsourcing by American companies. With each new promise, he seemed to one-up by promising ever more generous federal programs.
Then, as the third debate wound down, Bush closed the trap on Kerry, unveiling the ?“L?” word, accusing Kerry of being on the ?“extreme left bank?” of our politics, far from the mainstream, which the Republican claims to inhabit. No sooner was the debate over than Bush switched his media attack from flip-flopping to liberalism and labeled Kerry even to the left of Ted Kennedy, a taxer and spender in the tradition of former Gov. Mike Dukakis.
The very same attack that almost cost Bill Clinton the election in 1992 now seems to be damaging Kerry significantly, as he trails in every national poll, except for the hopelessly biased New York Times survey, which weights and bends its data to produce a tie.
Bush now follows a two-pronged strategy. On the negative, under the tutelage of Karl Rove, he attacks Kerry for liberalism and predicts major tax increases for all voters, even those well south of $200,000 in annual income. And on the positive side, guided by Karen Hughes, he seeks to bring the terror issue home to voters,
especially to women, by tying his aggressive efforts abroad to homeland security, a tactic unveiled at the Republican convention.
The result of this strategy is that Bush has surged in the days after the debates.
Having entered the debates well ahead of Kerry, he squandered his lead by his dismal performance in the first debate.
While Bush did better in the second and third debates, 15 million fewer viewers
watched these encounters than had seen the first debate fiasco. When the dust settled, Bush could boast no better than a tie with Kerry.
So Bush now has a domestic strategy ?— calling Kerry to task over taxes and liberalism ?— and a foreign strategy highlighting the salience of the war on terror, so that he wins the votes of those who want a firm and strong wartime protector against terror. He is prepared to move either way as events highlight one of the other aspect of the race as the election approaches.
Bush is playing chess, but all Kerry can manage is a poor game of checkers.
By Braintree's Resident Screwball
|
|
|
Terrorists' candidates?
Terrorists' candidates?
Do the bad guys ?— the terrorists in their Afghan caves and Iraqi redoubts ?— want George Bush defeated in this election? Bush critics, among them the editors of the New York Times, have worked themselves into a lather over the mere suggestion that this might be so. A front-page ''analysis'' in The Post quoted several Republican variations of this theme ?— such as Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage saying that the terrorists in Iraq ''are trying to influence the election against President Bush'' ?— then noted that ''[s]uch accusations . . . surfaced in the modern era during the McCarthy communist hunt.''
The terrorists may be medieval primitives, but they know about cell phones and the Internet and fuel-laden commercial airliners. They also know about elections. Their obvious objective is to drive from power those governments most deeply involved in the war against them ?— in Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else. The point is not only to radically alter an enemy nation's foreign policy ?— as in Spain ?— but to deter any other government contemplating similar support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
But Spain and Australia ?— Britain, with Tony Blair up for reelection next year, will surely be next ?— are merely supporting actors. The real prize is America. An electoral repudiation of President Bush would be seen by the world as a repudiation of Bush's foreign policy, specifically his aggressive, preemptive and often unilateral prosecution of the war on terrorism, most especially Iraq. It would be a correct interpretation because John Kerry has made clear that he is fighting this election on precisely those grounds.
Does this mean that the bad guys want Kerry to win? Michael Kinsley with his usual drollery ridicules the idea by conjuring up the image of Osama bin Laden, ''as he sits in his cave studying materials from the League of Women Voters,'' deciding to cast his absentee ballot for the Democrats.
The point, of course, is that the terrorists have no particular interest in Kerry. What they care about is Bush. He could be running against a moose, and bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi would be for the moose.How to elect the moose? A second direct attack on the United States would backfire.
The Islamists and Baathists in Iraq are conducting their own Tet Offensive with the same objective as the one in 1968: to demoralize the American citizenry, convince it that the war cannot be won, and ultimately encourage it to reject the administration that brought the war upon them and that is the more unequivocal about seeing it through.
It is perfectly true, as Bush critics constantly point out, that many millions around the world ?— from Jacques Chirac to the Arab street ?— dislike Bush and want to see him defeated. It is ridiculous to pretend that bin Laden, Zarqawi and the other barbarians are not among them.
By Dixie Whatley
|
