A national USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll conducted Sept.13-15 has Bush leading among RV’s 52-44 percent, with 2 percent for neither and 2 percent no opinion.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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March 16: DeSantis/Trump Alliance on Ukraine May Create Larger GOP Divisions
Ron DeSantis’ sudden lurch into a position opposing U.S. assistance to Ukraine may unravel his own 2024 coalition and introduce splits into the entire GOP, as I explained at New York:
Cynics have wondered if Ron DeSantis’s recent emergence as a populist culture warrior is a bit of an opportunistic act meant to help him both sideline and co-opt Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in the 2024 presidential race. After all, before Trump helped lift him to the Florida governorship, DeSantis was a congressman with a conventional conservative profile. He was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus back when its claim to fame was a favoring fiscal austerity even if that meant cutting popular retirement programs (as Trump has acidly pointed out). DeSantis’s recent antics could be seen as an attempt to attract both Trump supporters and Republicans who have had enough of the 45th president but know that some Trumpism is necessary to win the election.
If that’s his play, DeSantis may have taken it a bit too far in his recent about-face on Ukraine, which he broadcast in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson. As my colleague Jonathan Chait explains, the governor didn’t just hedge his strong support in Congress for U.S. aid to Ukraine or criticize Joe Biden’s handling of the conflict. Nor did he only describe Ukraine’s plight as the lesser of competing priorities — as he has done in the very recent past. No, he systematically went through the isolationist catechism on Ukraine, describing Russia’s aggression as a “territorial dispute” in which both sides are at fault while denouncing U.S. aid as “wasteful” and our whole posture as risking nuclear war.
This all sounded pretty familiar, Trump immediately noted, saying that DeSantis is “following what I am saying. It is a flip-flop. He was totally different. Whatever I want, he wants.”
Nikki Haley, another announced candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential contest, agreed. “President Trump is right when he says Governor DeSantis is copying him — first in his style, then on entitlement reform, and now on Ukraine. I have a different style than President Trump, and while I agree with him on most policies, I do not on those. Republicans deserve a choice, not an echo,” Haley said in a statement, per the Washington Examiner.
More generally, the backlash to DeSantis’s comments on Ukraine from key members of the Republican Establishment in the U.S. Senate was quite intense — with Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, Marco Rubio, John Thune, and Mitt Romney all deploring his new position with varying degrees of heat. Former governor and 2016 presidential candidate Chris Christie went furthest, saying that DeSantis “sounds like Neville Chamberlain talking about when Germany had designs on Czechoslovakia.”
One of conservatism’s major media pillars, The Wall Street Journal editorial board, blasted DeSantis for a “puzzling surrender this week to the Trumpian temptation of American retreat,” comparing his indifference to Russian aggression unfavorably to Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” posture toward adversaries like the Soviet Union. The editorial’s headline calls this DeSantis’s “first big mistake,” reflecting its perceived importance.
DeSantis is even getting serious guff over his Ukraine repositioning in the pages of National Review, which is often described as a “fanzine” for the Florida governor. National Review regular Noah Rothman denounced DeSantis’s statement to Carlson as “weak and convoluted” and “likely to haunt DeSantis in both the primary campaign and, should he make it that far, the general election. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is a ‘dispute’ over territory in the same way a bank robber and depositor have a ‘dispute’ over money.” Just as telling was National Review senior political correspondent Jim Geraghty’s defensive treatment of the Ukraine flip-flop as a piece of cheap campaign demagoguery that DeSantis would likely abandon if he actually makes it to the White House.
One pertinent question is how GOP voters feel about Ukraine and U.S. support for the beleaguered country. As Charlie Sykes notes, the party’s rank and file are divided: “A Pew poll in January found that 40 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents think the United States is giving too much aid to Ukraine, a number that has been steadily rising. But 41 percent still thought that we were not giving them enough, or that the aid was ‘about right.’” That means the sweet spot for GOP candidates is probably to attack Biden for all-purpose “weakness” — saying he emboldened thugs like Vladimir Putin, then overcompensated by making commitments to Ukraine that may exceed legitimate national interest. DeSantis has clearly gone beyond that safe posture and into America First disdain for the whole “dispute.”
The risk for DeSantis is more than just stoking doubts among some GOP primary voters, who are probably more interested in his anti-woke crusade in Florida than in what sort of foreign policy he might pursue in office. And the issue isn’t that he’s “copying” Trump, though that’s not a good look either. The bigger strategic problem is that DeSantis is trying to put together a mind-bending coalition that includes some Trump supporters as well as anti-Trump Republicans. Senator Mitt Romney, for example, seemed to hint recently that it was time for other potential candidates to give DeSantis a clean shot at the reigning champ.
What DeSantis is saying about Ukraine is precisely the kind of thing that could repel many anti-Trump Republicans or drive them into the arms of other candidates. And other GOP candidates will likely be quick to exploit a joint DeSantis-Trump position on Ukraine that alienates some GOP voters and a lot of GOP elites. Mike Pence is especially likely to join Haley in speaking out on the issue, as his mantra has been that “there is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.” In seeking to co-opt Trump on this issue, DeSantis may be shrinking what looked like a very big tent of post-Trump Republicans who looked to him as ringmaster.
We need to get someone to bombard the mainstream media outlets so that they report this. Does anyone have phone numbers to call ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC (Hardball), or CNN (Newsnight)? NOT FOX.
Reporting these false polls plants an impression in voters’ minds. It could result in a self-fulfilling prophecy: W. is unbeatable. Don’t bother to vote Kerry supporters, the war is already lost.
Don’t you believe it.
The Gallup methodology is deeply flawed and not by accident. They assume 38% of likely voters will be Republicans and only 33% will be Democrats, which is close to the opposite of the actual numbers in 1996 & 2000. Gallup’s chairman is a big republican donor.
I recently did some polling field work for a political campaign. During the two hours I worked (6PM-8PM Monday evening), I got answering machines 60% of the time. The other person working at the time had a similar experience. I think the biggest problem with polls is not cell phones but answering machines and caller ID. How can you have a scientific poll when the subjects of the poll are screening calls. I think this is why you see such wild swings in polls like Gallup. Think about it. Who is going to want to pick up the phone right after a Republican convention? Maybe enthusiastic Republicans? Don’t listen to the polls, at least until after the third debate.
Those reliant just on cell phones are still a pretty small percent of the population, which argues against this being a big factor. But that, along with those abroad, might matter at the margins in the election.
Does anyone know about the percentage of different populations who are abroad? How many, in particular, are from Florida or Ohio?
Regarding the idea that pollsters who don’t call cell phones are missing a huge swath of the electorate:
Deaniacs thought the same thing before Iowa.
If I remember correctly, Deaniacs posting to Dean blogs came to the sad conclusion that their hoped-for cell-phone-using youth vote just didn’t turn out.
So, they’re (young cell phone users) a possibility, but they may be so wrapped up in their own lives that they don’t see, in a visceral way (as many of us do), how this election will really effect them.
I sure hope I’m wrong.
Does anyone know the party affiliation breakdown for the Gallup poll. I looked at their site and can’t find it anywhere. I don’t give too much weight to polling organizations that don’t disseminate their internals.
Hey who needs Ruy, you guyz have done a pretty fair job…I didn’t realize just how much Gallup was not just an outlier but a renegad outlier.
The WSJ piece was interesting too inasmuch as I have long thought that turnout > 115 million spelled JFK victory…
I also have long thought that the negativity of the Bush camp is intended, in the main, as much to depress turnout as to drive up JFK’s negatives
And all of this thought, puts Gallup in a new and sinister light for me because Gallup has the most extensive media coverage, Gallup polls that, if this continues, show the race as essentially OVER, could help depress turnout and to some extent become a self-fullfilling prophecy
I posted in regarding this in another thread, but I want to make sure everyone understands about this “poll.”
They polled 1022 people, 51 percent said Bush, 45 Kerry; a 6 percent difference. Now that may sound fair, it isn’t that out of line, but look at the breakdown by Registered Voters. Despite consistantly higher Dem turnouts this poll finds registered voters going 52 dubya and 44 kerry, an 8 point lead. Meaning, they polled more GOP to get artificially high results. Same would happen if you polled a group of dems, they would skew the results in Kerry’s favor.
What especially is so tricky about this poll is that that the pollsters took a poll already skewed unrealistically towards Bush, and then cut it down giving him yet more advantage. The “likely voter” subset of the survey is 767, and that is the group that shows Bush up 13.
This poll is a Karl Rove special.
The republicans better hope that Gallup is right, but me, I don’t think so. It was not so long ago that most polls had Kerry up in the 5% and Gallup was still showing Bush up by two or 3%. Whatever weighting, or methodology Gallup is using it has to be very different from most other polls.
I think if Kerry is within 1 or 2% in any state he will win that state. The vibe is so anti-war and anti-Bush and I think the 2 questions that tell the story are “rigth track – wrong track” and “deserves to be elected.” These numbers are still against Bush.
In today’s Salon.com, writer Joe Conason asserts that the polls hold more good news for Kerry than for Bush. He also gives a plug to Ruy’s excellent (“smart, professional, duly skeptical analysis”)! Because Salon is subscription, I’m cutting and pasting the text from Conason’s text below instead of providing a link:
Kerry rising
Rumors of John Kerry’s demise have been greatly exaggerated — too often by doomsaying Dems themselves. A host of new polls suggest it’s the president who should be trembling.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
By Joe Conason
Sept. 17, 2004 | To listen to certain Democrats these days is to learn that the presidential election is all but over, apparently because John Kerry slipped behind George W. Bush in a few national polls last week. These sad doomsayers whine constantly that Kerry “isn’t tough enough,” when what they are really talking about are their own mental weaknesses. Much of the anger and determination displayed by liberals over the past year seems suddenly to have deflated into fear and resignation.
At such moments, a once-important Democratic functionary inevitably pipes up to get his or her name in the newspaper by attacking the party’s candidate or campaign. Even if this person happens to be a thoroughly discredited figure like Tony Coelho, a washout as Al Gore’s campaign manager, his remarks get ink because “it’s a story” when Democrats criticize each other. What would really be a story is a Republican behaving with the same lack of discipline endemic among Democrats just now.
The liberal tendency to assume the fetal position upon hearing any bad news not only creates a damaging psychological environment for those who indulge it, but also repels undecided and independent voters who are seeking strong, confident leadership. Nobody wants to join a team that obsesses more about losing than winning.
And there is no reason to give up, regardless of any flaws in the Kerry-Edwards campaign or the Bush-Cheney convention “bounce.” That bounce has fallen flat, returning the presidential race to a virtual dead heat, according to several new polls.
The new Harris Interactive/Wall Street Journal poll, completed on Sept. 13, shows Kerry with 48 percent, Bush with 47 percent and Ralph Nader with 2 percent. Those results were nearly identical to the last Harris poll, taken before the Republican Convention, when Kerry was ahead by 1 point. The most noticeable shift in this poll’s results is that the 10-point lead Bush enjoyed last June is gone. More than half of the respondents think Bush “doesn’t deserve to be reelected [sic].”
The most recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press shows the Bush lead falling precipitously during the past week. Between Sept. 8 and Sept. 10, Bush was ahead of Kerry by 54 to 38 among “likely voters” — but between Sept. 11 and Sept. 14, that gap diminished to Bush 47 versus Kerry 46.
Today, the Economist released a new YouGov poll, which employs online technology developed by a British survey firm, and found Bush ahead of Kerry by a single point, 47 to 46. To the magazine’s editors this represents an “impressive” result for Bush because more than 56 percent of the voters polled by YouGov say they are “dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time.”
Democracy Corps, run by James Carville and Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, completed a new poll of 1,003 voters on Sept. 14, which also showed Bush one point ahead, 49 to 48 percent. Greenberg’s poll includes lots of data suggesting that voters want a new direction — and that independents, in particular, are deeply dissatisfied with Bush.
The latest survey by Investor’s Business Daily and the Christian Science Monitor, completed Sept. 12, actually shows Kerry ahead by two points among registered voters and tied with Bush among “likely” voters. (For a useful discussion of this distinction and why it may not be meaningful at this stage, consult Ruy Teixeira’s Donkey Rising blog, which provides smart, professional and duly skeptical analysis of media polls.)
As Gallup polling director Frank Newport said last week when Bush was riding high on a post-convention wave, the presidential election remains in flux and unpredictable.
“In all presidential elections there has been at least some movement between Gallup’s Labor Day poll and the final outcome on Election Day,” Newport explained. “The general tendency is toward a closing of whatever gap exists on Labor Day. Certainly, the race is close enough at this point to suggest that while it is possible that George Bush may maintain his lead or expand it, it is also quite possible that John Kerry will gain and move into the lead himself.”
(Of course, placing too much confidence in horse-race polls is a mistake. In the final weeks of the 2000 election, major polls showed Bush ahead of Al Gore by three to 13 points — and then Gore won the popular vote tally by more than 500,000.)
Aside from Newport’s observation, there are other reasons for Bush to worry about voters souring permanently on him before Nov. 2. The most salient is the war in Iraq. A growing majority of people now understand that they were misled by the Bush administration, that the war is going poorly, and that the White House has no viable exit strategy. As public focus returns to the consequences of this administration’s incompetence, John Kerry can still seize the opportunity to regain his lead — if he dares.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
About the writer
Joe Conason writes a twice weekly column for Salon. He also writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His new book, “Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth,” is now available. Join Joe Conason along with Ann Richards, David Talbot and others on the Salon Cruise
Bob Shrum is to thank for this mess. Despite all the positive talk about the race being closer- Gallup lands a Wallup. Electorial map is weaker- Nadar is on in Florida.
Kerry is about a bad a candidate as Mondale.
Kerry needs to counter Bush attacks on him. Bush has repeatedly said that Kerry has had multiple positions on Iraq. This is untrue. Kerry needs to pointedly say that this is not true. He needs to call Bush on this point, because it is a big selling point for Bush. Sure we don’t trust Bush, but Bush is making the argument that we can trust Kerry even less.
Kerry has been remarkably consistent on Iraq. Kerry needs to address Iraq in simple terms. Kerry should forget about the vote to make Saddam comply. Kerry needs to say explicitly-
1. Invading Iraq unilaterally was the wrong tactic at the wrong time.
2. Invading Iraq has made Iraq into a new breeding ground for terrorists.
3. He will stabilize Iraq and get out.
Kerry needs to accuse Bush of repeatedly mistating Kerry’s position on Iraq.
Most Americans don’t know this is and always has been the Kerry position. Kerry needs to hammer this message. If the vote question arises, then we need to hammer that the vote was to force Saddam to comply, not to invade. There were many other options available rather than the one Bush chose, invasion. If Kerry cannot deliver this message, he will not get support for ability to handle Iraq.
Dr. Joe-
Very good post. Thanks.
I saw two points, both of which have already shown up on this site from time to time, that bear repeating:
1) There’s plenty of reason to doubt LV numbers.
2) It makes sense to look at more than a single poll.
I’ll continue to say what I’ve been saying…looks like a slight Bush lead. It’s going to be a close election. Keep focused and keep working.
And maybe having Gallup be so far from the other polls will actually get some who report polling data to think about what this all means a bit more than they have….
check out jimmy breslin’s column in newsday sept 16.
baasically prmeise: standard polls are useless because of cell phones
Here is Al Hunt’s analysis of polling in today’s (September 17) Wall Street Journal:
What If the Polls Are Wrong?
Election Surveys That Screen Out
‘Unlikely’ Voters Might Be Outdated
September 17, 2004
Presidential elections are poll-driven. The candidate ahead in the surveys usually gets better coverage, and the results energize supporters. The one behind often comes across as doing little right, and campaigns and constituencies lose confidence.
But what if the polls are wrong, and we aren’t surveying the real likely electorate?
This might be more than an academic issue. A number of polls this presidential race show a gap in the preferences of registered voters vs. likely voters. In these models, the president usually does better with likely voters, the figure most news organizations emphasize. To get to likely voters, all polling organizations use what is called a “screen,” asking questions to determine who is likely to actually turn out on election day.
These screens differ greatly, as there is no consensus among experts on what works best. “This is an art, not a science,” says Peter Hart, the prominent Democratic polltaker who has helped conduct The Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey for 15 years.
This controversy will be fueled by today’s just-released Gallup poll that shows George Bush with a 13-point lead over John Kerry. That is at variance with other surveys this week, which suggest a tight race with a much smaller Bush tilt. But the likely voters margin also is considerably larger than the eight-point advantage in Gallup’s registered voters in this survey. The likely voters match-up invariably gets more attention.
Gallup explains it has what it considers a time-tested formula for determining most likely voters. It asks eight questions, such as current intensity of interest, past voting behavior and interest, and whether you know where your voting place is.
“We’ve discovered that if we ask a set of more indirect questions, we can better predict who is or is not likely to vote,” Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, has said.
But there is reason to suspect those criteria are outdated, especially in an election where both sides say the intensity level is much higher than four years ago and get-out-the-vote organizations are considerably better than ever — few people on Nov. 2 will be in the dark on where the voting polls are.
“A formula that made sense years ago may not recognize all the changes in society,” notes Mr. Hart. “It gives more credence to past behavior and too little to current interest.”
“For low-turnout elections those old models work well,” suggests Bill McInturff, a Republican, and the other WSJ/NBC News pollster. “But in today’s presidential election those models tend to [tilt to] a little older, a little more white, a little more affluent and a little more Republican voters. They may miss some of the extraordinary activity going on in African-American and Latino communities.”
The registered-likely voters dichotomy also is evident in some of Gallup’s state surveys including last week’s Ohio results.” Among registered voters in the Buckeye State, Bush-Cheney had a 48%-to- 47% edge, a dead heat. Among likely voters, however, this poll had the Republicans up 52%-44%; that garnered all the attention, followed by a spate of stories suggesting this key battleground state was moving to the president.
Curiously, the Gallup poll in the similar state of Pennsylvania at the same time showed a virtually even race among both registered and likely voters. And occasionally, the screen favors the Democrats; a Marist survey this week of New York state showed Sen. Kerry 11 points ahead among likely voters, but only seven points ahead among registered voters.
But most of the time the screen for likely voters tilts Republican. In 2000, Gallup’s election eve survey showed George Bush ahead by two points among its likely voters; he trailed Al Gore by a point among registered voters, very close to the final outcome.
In 2000, the next to last WSJ/NBC poll before the election showed Republicans doing three points better among likely voters than registered voters. The election eve survey showed Bush up three points among likely voters, but failed to tally registered voters and didn’t predict Al Gore’s victory in the popular vote.
The Wall Street Journal and NBC News have settled on one question to screen likely turnout. Registered voters are asked their interest level in the election on a scale of 1-10, and those that respond 9 or 10 are considered likely voters.
Both camps expect an increase in the 105 million Americans who voted last time; the Bush camp looks for abut 111-112 million while the Kerry campaign projects 116-118 million; nobody can be sure exactly who those additional voters might be.
The probable outlook: Polls will vary and conflict if this race remains tight. Also, poll watchers must remember that the best survey has a three or four-point margin of error; that means if it shows the race even, one or the other candidate actually could be up by a half-dozen. Here’s a final guide: if almost all the election eve polls show one candidate up four or five points or more, take it to the bank. But if most show the race within a couple of points, plan on staying up late election night.
All this stuff seems consistent with a “real” lead for Bush of 3-4 points nationally and a virtual tie in the battleground states; if we’re still up by 5-6 points in places like NJ this one poll’s no cause for concern. (If NJ is actually tied, that would be a problem.) Since Ruy hasn’t deconstructed this one yet, check out Chris Bowers’ analysis at http://www.mydd.com– it’s not the first time Gallup’s showed Bush with a huge lead no other poll gives.