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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

New National Poll Shows Neck and Neck Race for White House

A new Zogby America poll of nationwide LV’s conducted Sept. 8-9 has Bush at 47 percent and Kerry at 45 percent in a head to head match-up, within a 3.1 percent m.o.e.

4 comments on “New National Poll Shows Neck and Neck Race for White House

  1. Bob H on

    I think Kerry is in a great position to surge ahead based on such things as:
    A strong debate performance
    An uprising in Iraq going beyond the present upsurge
    A North Korean bomb test if he can convincingly make the case that it is due to Bush fumbles.

    Reply
  2. gabby hayes on

    My dream result is:
    *Kerry wins big, bigger than any thought
    *The pro Bush polls are exposed and ridiculed
    *The good polls are vindicated by being closest

    Reply
  3. Charlie T. on

    From Zogby’s notes for the survey: “Slight weights were added to region, party, age, race, religion and gender to more accurately reflect the voting population. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.”
    As noted by others in previous posts, Zogby and some others are weighting party ID a little bit in their polls, while Time, Newsweek, etc. aren’t. I didn’t see in the notes to this poll what the exact weighting for Dems/Reps/Inds was.
    This whole debate over whether to weight party ID or not is starting to get a little play in some of the media – the local NPR station in NY had a segment on it yesterday. Here’s an off-the-cuff observation: one would think that there would be some sort of established standards for an industry that’s been around for many decades. If a pollster is going to weight other factors, why would he/she exclude party ID from (at least to some extent) the same treatment? The arguments that I’ve heard that party ID should be a “floating variable” don’t make much sense if every other major demographic attribute gets weighted. One can sum up these polls with this motto: buyer beware – read the fine print.
    In any event, the numbers are starting to settle in the wake of the GOP hatefest. It looks like Bush has established a 2-4 point lead. Kerry still has the issues environment on his side, so I remain optimistic that we’re going to win. BTW, Jeff’s post from yesterday about the demographic changes in the electorate over the past four years was great…I was aware of nearly all of those things, but he put all the pertinent data in a summarized and understandable format.

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  4. Dana on

    This contributes little to the discussion of facts, but…let me say what a good pick-me-up your blog is, Ruy. For those of us who care deeply about this election and its repercussions (but haven’t the time to parse the details), I count myself fortunate to be able to visit your site and routinely catch “the rest of the story.” Believe me, I pass it on to all my Donkey friends.

    Reply

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