John Kerry leads George Bush 50 to 41 percent of New Hampshire LV’s, according to a Center for Applied Public Opinion Research Poll conducted 10/18-21 for Franklin Pierce College. The poll scored Bush’s approval rating at 45 percent.
John Kerry leads George Bush 50-48 percent of Florida LV’s, according to a SurveyUSA Poll conducted 10/22-24.
TDS Strategy Memos
Latest Research from:
Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
-
March 22: Ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard Can’t Decide Which Bad Ticket She Wants to Join
One of the odder phenomena of the 2024 presidential election is a certain 2020 Democratic candidate who has strayed very far since then. I took a look at her options at New York:
A month ago, when ex-Democratic congresswoman and 2020 presidential wannabe Tulsi Gabbard showed up at a Mar-a-Lago event, I wrote about the logic that could make her a highly unconventional but not entirely implausible 2024 running mate for Donald Trump. Once a major backer of Bernie Sanders, Gabbard’s trajectory toward MAGA-land has been steady since she left the Democratic Party in the fall of 2022, a main course she served up with a side dish of jarring candidate endorsements (e.g., of J.D. Vance). Even when she was still a Democrat running for president, though, her orientation was more MAGA-adjacent than you might expect, as Geoffrey Skelley explained in 2019:
“Gabbard’s supporters … are more likely to have backed President Trump in 2016, hold conservative views or identify as Republican compared to voters backing the other candidates. …
“In fact, Gabbard has become a bit of a conservative media darling in the primary, with conservative commentators like Ann Coulter and pro-Trump social media personalities like Mike Cernovich complimenting her for her foreign policy views. In a primary in which some 2020 Democratic contenders have boycotted Fox News, Gabbard has regularly appeared on the network. Just last week, Gabbard even did an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, a far-right political outlet. She’s also made appeals outside the political mainstream by going on The Joe Rogan Experience — one of the most popular podcasts in the country and a favored outlet for members of the Intellectual Dark Web, whose purveyors don’t fit neatly into political camps but generally criticize concepts such as political correctness and identity politics.”
So her parting blast at Democrats as controlled by an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness” didn’t come out of nowhere.
But much as Gabbard might be an outside-the-box running mate for the 45th president, it does seem there is another 2024 presidential candidate whose extreme hostility to mainstream institutions and difficult-to-categorize views might make him a better match for her: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And sure enough, according to NBC News, the wiggy anti-vaxxer is interested in Gabbard:
“The four-term former member of Congress from Hawaii is now getting consideration for both former President Donald Trump’s and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tickets, two sources familiar with the candidates’ deliberations told NBC News.”
The prospect of choosing between these two politicians appears to have left Gabbard feeling she’s in the catbird seat:
“As one source said, Gabbard would be more likely to seriously consider running as Kennedy’s vice presidential nominee had she not been swept up by the possibility of serving with Trump. This person said Gabbard ‘was enticed’ by the chance of serving on Kennedy’s ticket but is now focused on the possibility that Trump will select her.
“’My understanding is that Tulsi is convinced that Trump is going to pick her,’ this person said. ‘Had that not been the case, she probably would have gone with Kennedy.’”
Since Kennedy has scheduled a running-mate reveal for March 26 in Oakland, we’ll know soon enough whether he chose Gabbard and Gabbard chose him. Others rumored to be on his short list include New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, and California entrepreneur and major RFK Jr. donor Nicole Shanahan.
As NBC notes, it’s more than a bit unusual for people to be considered for multiple presidential tickets:
“[I]t’s exceedingly rare for a politician to attract interest from more than one presidential ticket or party. (Ahead of the 1952 election, Democrats and Republicans led dueling efforts to draft another politically ambiguous veteran, Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme Allied commander in Europe during World War II, for the presidential race.)”
It’s hard to say what Tulsi Gabbard would think of this comparison. After all, Ike was a bit of a warmonger.
phatcat — thanks for the statistical analysis. That kind of work is beyond my abilities. I intend to savor the salt of a Kerry victory long after November 2.
KerryWillWin — thanks for raising the obvious question. You do a better job of supporting my suspicious question, which centered on the strangeness of undecideds breaking for Kery in New Hampshire but not elsewhere.
Matt: If undecideds are supposedly breaking to Bush at 5:1, how come Kerry’s lead is GROWING there this week after last week it was declared a tossup.
Take the undecided voter issue with several heaping handfuls of salt. The report makes the case that undecided voters in NH (7.9% of the sample) are leaning heavily Bush, and that the Bush campaign should be heartened that this is really a close race.
Not only does this not pass the common sense test of the Incumbent Rule, it doesn’t pass the survey analysis integrity test. If 7.9% of the respondents are undecided voters, that translates to an undecided sample size of 36. That’s an extremely small sample size, and prone to ridiculous levels of sampling error (+/- 16). Strangely, the report mentions strong Bush approval ratings among undecideds, but doesn’t publish the actual number. In any case, if Bush polls a 60% approval rating, all we know is that his actual approval rating is somewhere between 44% and 76%, which is hardly enlightening.
With sample sizes this small, drill downs become nonsensical and I’m very surprised they tried to use the undecideds to make a case that Bush has hope in this poll. If anything, the poll is even worse than it appears for Bush, since the sample overrepresented Republicans by 5 points (unless the results were weighted, but they make no mention of it). If the results were weighted to reflect actual party ID patterns, Bush would be down even more.
I agree with Green Dems assessment also. I think Kerry republicans will get the ball over the net for our guy on Nov. 2. The dynamics of the race haven’t changed that much for several months despite poll gyrations: Democrats are highly motivated and they are all in Kerry’s court. Republicans are split. Christian conservatives and rural republicans will vote for Bush come hell or high water, but common sense republicans will split three ways: 1) hold their noses and vote Bush, 2) hold their noses and vote Kerry, or 3) stay home. Factor into this mix the liklihood that first time voters and independents are trending to Kerry, and you have a Kerry win. Actually, I think the only unanswered question at this point is – will it be a Kerry squeaker, or a solid Kerry win. The proof of this can clearly be seen watching Bush yesterday begging his base to get out and vote.
Clinton showed the way, that Democrats who seek to represent Middle Class Americans are the ones who get a chance to help lesser Americans.
We didn’t invent the DLC merely for the hell of it. You have to plow that middle ground to win.
I therefore agree with Green Democrat’s assessment about the chance for new alliances. Assuming a Kerry victory, the Republican party implodes. While success has a thousand fathers, failure is a bastard, and everyone will be looking for THAT baby’s daddy.
Meanwhile, the Repubs who are annoyed at the rightwing freakazoids will clamor to Arnold, McCain, and Rudy to retake the party for 08.
Need to drill down in the New Hampshire poll. Undecided voters are breaking for Bush by a ratio of 5 to 1. Is the undecided vote breaking to Bush in any other state?
Kerry’s strength in libertarian-leaning New Hampshire suggests (not surprisingly) that more fiscally conservative and culturally laissez faire Republicans may be trending Dem. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention, of course. This is not your father’s Republican Party anymore. The GOP of limited government, individual liberty, and personal resposnibility is finished, replaced by a big government, fiscally irresponsible Christian conservatism at home and a belligerent and messianic interventionism abroad.
I suspect that collaboration between Democrats and moderate libertarians could prove enduring, but I worry that the so-called war on terror combined with the GOP’s new love of populism could put white working class voters solidly in their column for a generation, and draw in enough Hispanics with such an agenda to make it a lock. Although, with Kerry doing so well among independents (and apparently now new voters) that might just be paranoia…
Is this the same SurveyUSA that has a 22 point lead for Bush in Tennessee? I’m not sure I trust that outfit. I think Rasmussen’s Florida Bush trend makes more sense–steadily dropping from a high of a little over fifty and flatlining at 47 or so. (Or about where he was six weeks ago.)