Friday, August 27 2004: KERRY WEAKENING AHEAD OF RNC: Four new major polls came out yesterday all showing a small lead for President Bush, except for the FOX News poll which has Kerry ahead one point among likely voters. (So much for the liberal gripes you hear about FOX's poll favoring the GOP.)
The poll dump yesterday seems to confirm the damage done to the Kerry campaign from the swift boat/Vietnam blowup over the last two weeks, as the following chart of our RCP 3-Way average indicates:
Even more troubling for the Kerry campaign, however, are the state polls of registered voters done by the decidedly not conservative Los Angeles Times that show Kerry trailing in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Missouri. It's not good news for Democrats when the front page of the Los Angeles Times runs a headline story, "Key Midwest Swing States Are Leaning Toward Bush."
Compounding the bad news for Kerry from the LA Times polls, a new IssuesPA/Pew poll of 861 likely voters in Pennsylvania shows President Bush ahead 45%-44%.
The concern for the Kerry campaign is these new polls showing the President ahead both nationally and in critical battleground states are occurring before next week's GOP convention in New York.
As Fred Barnes astutely pointed out on FNC's Special Report with Brit Hume last night, Kerry's call for weekly issue debates is a de facto admission by their campaign that they don't like the dynamic of the race as it currently exists.
The next three weeks will be crucial for the Kerry campaign. To use a sports analogy: they're no longer playing preseason games against Dean, Gephardt, Kucinich and Wesley Clark. Kerry is in the Superbowl now, and the reigning champs are staring to pound the ball up the field with a good deal of success.
Kerry and the Democrats are in a much more precarious position than the recently adopted Cook/Sabato/Broder conventional wisdom suggests. Senator Kerry must keep this race close over the course of the next few weeks, because if President Bush is able to build on his new found lead, Kerry's chances in November will be seriously diminished. J |
