ACE OF SPADES - Newsweek: Breaking for Bush
A six point lead, 50-44. But that's not the fun part. The fun part is watching hyperliberal Newsweek attempt to claim that "anything less than a nine point lead" is a "statistical tie," and that a six point lead really means nothing with a four point MoE, etc.
Let them coccoon.
The coccoon gets ripped open on Tuesday.
MSNBC.com
Breaking to Bush?
It’s still a statistical dead heat, but a new Newsweek poll gives Bush a boost
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Marcus Mabry
Newsweek
Updated: 10:05 a.m. ET Oct. 30, 2004
Oct. 30 - After months of the tightest presidential election contest in recent memory, a new NEWSWEEK poll suggests momentum may be moving toward President George W. Bush. As the bitter campaign enters its final days, against the eerie backdrop of a surprise appearance by Osama Bin Laden, Bush’s lead is still within the poll’s margin of error, but larger than last week. If the election were held today, 50 percent of likely voters would cast ballots for Bush and 44 percent for the Democrat, Sen. John Kerry. (Ralph Nader would receive 1 percent.) That compares to a Bush lead last week among likely voters of 48 percent to Kerry's 46 percent.
In a two-way trial heat, excluding Nader, Bush/Cheney would defeat Kerry/Edwards 51 percent to 45 percent among likely voters. Last week Bush led 48 to 47 in the two-way contest.
The poll finds the race closer among registered voters. Forty-eight percent of registered voters would vote for Bush and 44 percent would vote for Kerry. One percent would vote for Nader. In a two-way race, 48 percent would vote for Bush/Cheney and 45 percent would vote for Kerry/Edwards. The worse news for Kerry: in the last lap of the race, the number of “persuadables” is falling. Now, 9 percent of registered voters say they haven’t made up
their minds, down from 13 percent last week. And just 6 percent of likely voters say they haven’t decided.
With a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent (meaning any support number could be up to four points higher or down to four points lower) anything less than a nine-point lead is a statistical dead heat. So to the statisticians and professional pollsters, Bush’s six-point lead is a tie. But for a closely divided electorate, any movement at all in this fiercely fought race looks huge.
Weeks of the candidates bashing each other seem to have hurt Kerry more than Bush. As memories of Kerry’s performance in the debates—which almost every poll said voters rated superior to the president’s—have waned, so have his poll numbers. And despite a constant drone of bad news—from missing explosives in Iraq to weaker-than-expected economic growth—Bush has not only stayed strong, he’s grown stronger.
That’s clear in the new NEWSWEEK poll. The president’s approval rating remains unchanged from last week at 46 percent. A majority of Americans are still dissatisfied with the direction of the country: 56 percent, the same as last week. Yet Bush’s support number has increased by two or three points and his margin over Kerry by four or five points. Why? One clue may lie in the candidate’s favorability ratings. Overall, 52 percent of registered voters have a favorable opinion of Bush, 43 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him. Last week 50 percent were favorable and 47 percent were unfavorable. The favorables beat the unfavorables by nine points this week, last week they only outnumbered them by three points.
Kerry has seen exactly the opposite shift. His favorable/unfavorable ratings are 47 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable this week, basically even. Last week, his favorability rating was 50 percent and his unfavorable 45 percent. The anti-Kerry ads may be having an effect, especially with blue-collar, socially conservative white voters. Although pollsters say the sample size is too small to be statistically solid (with a margin of error of plus or minus nine points), in the new poll, labor-union households—part of the Democratic base—are leaning toward Bush 54 percent to 42 percent. Last week, they were leaning toward Kerry 61 to 35 (with a margin of error of plus or minus 11). Again, it’s a tiny sample of just 153 households, but if other polls bear out the trend, Kerry could face a Reagan Democrat renaissance.
Now the president may get a helping hand from an unlikely source. On Friday, just before NEWSWEEK started its third and final night of polling, Osama bin Laden appeared on TV screens in living rooms and offices across America. It was the first time the nation had seen a new image of bin Laden in more than a year. In a videotaped message directed explicitly to American voters, bin Laden says that neither candidate can protect them and mocks Bush for lingering in a Florida classroom after the September 11 attacks.
Some pundits and Kerry backers argued that bin Laden’s appearance, looking healthy and rested, just days before the election would remind voters that Bush had failed to get the man he promised to capture “dead or alive.” They argued that that failure would support Kerry’s assertion that Bush’s war in Iraq was a dangerous distraction from defeating Al Qaeda.
But whenever the subject of the campaign has turned to terrorism, it has benefited Bush. In every poll since the campaign began, voters have said they trust Bush more than Kerry to handle the challenges of terrorism and homeland security—usually by a 15-to 20-point margin (the one exception: polls immediately after the Democratic National Convention, when Kerry managed to close the gap to a few percentage points.) In the new NEWSWEEK poll, registered voters say they trust Bush over Kerry 56 percent to 37 percent to tackle terrorism.
Overall, though, there hasn’t been much movement in how voters view the candidates or the issues. Kerry still has a slight lead on dealing with the economy (48 to 44 percent among registered voters), health care (50 to 41), jobs (49 to 42), Social Security (48 to 42), stem-cell research (53 to 34) and the environment (54 to 35.) Bush leads on Iraq (52 to 42) and taxes (49 to 43). The candidates are virtually tied on education and trust on handling the abortion issue. And in a reversal of last week’s poll, Bush has retaken the lead on gay marriage (46 to 41).
Is this the moment that both campaigns have been waiting for, when one starts to break away from the eternal deadlock? Maybe. Independents seem to be moving toward Bush. Last week Kerry captured independents’ support 52 to 38 percent. This week, for the first time since the debates, Bush has retaken the lead among independents, 47 to 38 percent. The margin of error is plus or minus six points for independents’ support, but Kerry’s lead a week ago was almost outside that poll's plus or minus seven-point margin.
That doesn’t mean the Bush campaign can start putting the bubbly on ice. Pollsters note that, historically, in races with an incumbent candidate, undecideds who only make their choice at the last minute break two-to-one in favor of the challenger. The Bush campaign believes that the war on terrorism—and voters’ greater trust in Bush to prosecute it—will mean that more of those late-breaking undecideds will fall its way. There’s no way to know until Tuesday.
And there is a whole deck of other wild cards. Most observers expect a larger-than-usual turnout, given the passions swirling around this election. If first-time voters turn out in huge numbers, or if young voters actually come out and vote this time, then all the polls (which assume both of those groups will only turn out in their usual low numbers) will be wrong. First-time voters support Kerry 47 to 44 percent over Bush and voters under 30 support Kerry 52 to 38 percent for Bush. (Note that the margin of error for first time voters is plus or minus 11 and for under-30’s is plus or minus 10.)
So, what will happen on Election Day? Who knows? If the Democrats and their "527" allies succeed at what they promise will be historic get-out-the-vote efforts, Kerry still has a chance. And it’s the tally in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and New Hampshire that matters more than the national horserace, which only measures the popular vote.
Whoever wins in the end, Americans don’t expect it to be pretty. A 59-percent majority of registered voters say they expect major problems or disputes on Election Day. Only 34 percent of voters think the election will go smoothly. And 54 percent of voters believe that the vote will be so close that there will not be a clear winner on Tuesday night “and the courts will determine the winner.” (Forty percent think that’s unlikely.) We’ll know soon enough—or not.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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