More Madness: Mason-Dixon Shows Bush Tied Or Ahead In Blue States
By Captain Ed on Presidential Election
Now that I've warned you all about carefully vetting poll results, I'm going to through more of them at you. Mason-Dixon released its most recent polling data in those battleground states that went for Gore in 2000, and the news looks bad for John Kerry. Bush either tied Kerry or went ahead in all of the states they polled. I included the ratio of Dems/GOP MD used in each state:
PA - Kerry, 46-45 (49/44)
MI - Kerry, 47-46 (38/36)
OR - Kerry, 47-46 (41/37)
WI - Tie, 45-45 (35/35)
IA - Bush, 49-43 (37/40)
This polling took place over the weekend, Oct 15-18, a time that usually favors Democrats. Mason-Dixon sampled 625 voters in each state and normalized by county and demographics, as they usually do. I think that MD may have undersampled the GOP in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and maybe overpolled them slightly in Iowa.
Interestingly, in all five states, Bush is viewed more favorably than Kerry, and his unfavorability numbers are lower than Kerry in all five. These are two separate numbers, as Neutral was given as a valid choice. In fact, Bush's Favorable ratings exceed his Neutral ratings outside the margin of error in three of the five states, while Kerry only does that in Oregon.
No gender demographics were given, which would have been very interesting to read, but the news is bad enough for Kerry as it is. Losing Iowa -- and a six-point gap looks pretty significant less than two weeks before the election -- indicates that the entire Upper Midwest is ripe for a Bush win. The momentum in the battleground states appears to be going exclusively towards Bush. Expect Kerry and Edwards to play a lot of defense in these states over the next eleven days.
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