A head-to-head poll of nation-wide LV’s by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted 9/12-14 for Democracy Corps has Bush ahead of Kerry 49-48 percent with 1 percent going for other.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 25: Can “Reverse Coattails” Help Biden Win?
A relatively new term is popping up in articles on 2024 strategy for Democrats that I explained and explored at New York:
When you have a presidential candidate who is struggling to generate enthusiasm in the party base, it’s natural to look for some external stimulation. In the case of Joe Biden, the most obvious source of a 2024 boost is the deep antipathy that nearly all Democrats, many independents, and even a sizable sliver of Republicans feel toward Donald Trump. But in case that’s not enough, Team Biden is looking at another avenue of opportunity, albeit a risky one: the possibility of “reverse coattails” taking him past Trump on a wave of turnout that incidentally benefits the president of the United States.
That’s not the conventional wisdom, as the term reverse coattails makes clear: Normally, it’s the head of the ticket from whom all blessings flow, which makes sense insofar as presidential-election turnout dwarfs that of off-year and midterm contests in no small part because people who don’t necessarily care about the identity of their senator or governor are galvanized by the battle for the White House. But as Russell Berman of The Atlantic explains, this year is different:
“Faith in the reverse-coattails effect is fueling Democratic investments in down-ballot races and referenda. In North Carolina, for example, party officials hope that a favorable matchup in the governor’s race — Democratic attorney general Josh Stein is facing Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who has referred to homosexuality as ‘filth’ and compared abortion to slavery — could help Biden carry a state that Trump narrowly won twice. Democrats are also trying to break a Republican supermajority in the legislature, where they are contesting nearly all 170 districts. ‘The bottom of the ticket is absolutely driving engagement and will for all levels of the ballot,’ Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told me.”
In other states, high-profile ballot measures, particularly those aimed at restoring the abortion rights denied by conservative courts and Republican lawmakers, may generate bottoms-up enthusiasm benefiting Biden and embattled Democratic Senate candidates as well:
“In key states across the country, Democrats and their allies are planting ballot initiatives both to protect reproductive rights where they are under threat and to turn out voters in presidential and congressional battlegrounds. They’ve already placed an abortion measure on the ballot in Florida, where the state supreme court upheld one of the nation’s most restrictive bans on the procedure, and they plan to in Arizona, whose highest court recently ruled that the state could enforce an abortion ban first enacted during the Civil War. Democrats are also collecting signatures for abortion-rights measures in Montana, home to a marquee Senate race, and in Nevada, a presidential swing state that has a competitive Senate matchup this year.”
Berman notes that the reverse-coattails strategy is unproven. Voters, for example, who attracted to the polls by abortion ballot measures don’t always follow the partisan implications of their votes when it comes to candidate preferences. Red-hot down-ballot races are probably more reliable in attracting voters who can be expected to follow the party line to the top of the ticket. A positive precedent can be found in Georgia’s coordinated effort of 2020, when a powerful campaign infrastructure built by Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock clearly helped maximize Biden’s vote; the 46th president won the state by less than 12,000. Perhaps a strong Senate candidate like Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey could help Biden survive as well. As for the possible effect of ballot measures, it was once generally accepted that in 2004 a GOP strategy of encouraging anti-same-sex-marriage ballot measures helped boost conservative turnout in battleground states like Ohio, enabling George W. Bush’s narrow victory (though there are analysts who argue against that hypothesis). One reason it may work better today is the increasing prevalence of straight-ticket voting and the heavy emphasis of Democratic campaigns up and down the ballot on the kind of support for abortion rights that should help them take advantage of ballot-measure-generated turnout.
We won’t get a good idea of how either reverse-coattails strategy is working until late in the 2024 campaign when it becomes possible to measure new voter registrations, screen registered voters for their likelihood to participate in the election, and assess states where down-ballot contests are turning into a Democratic blowout. Team Biden would be wise to do everything in its power to lift the president’s popularity and build a favorability advantage over Trump that can reduce the number of “double haters” likely to stay home or vote for a change in the party management of Washington.
The difference is there in both 3-day and 7-day tracking data. Never mind! Strange though how the spread is similar in both 3 day (4.6) and 7 day (3.7). The one day jump must have been enormous to add 2% difference to the previous 7 day average.
Probably a sampling error. When you take a poll every day, you wind up with a bad sample now and then. When looking at a tracking poll, the important thing is the trend, not the daily number. The trend for Bush has been downward since the end of the convention and Kerry’s trend has been upward since then. When the bad sample rolls off, the numbers will narrow again.
Rasmussen just switch from a 3 day rolling average to a 7 day or 14 day rolling average. This could explain the sudden jump in the number since it would include some of the early post-convention data If true it will smooth out in about 4-7 days.
Any body have suggestions though on why Rasmussen’s rolling daily poll suddenly showed what had been a Bush lead of one percent or less for several days jumping to about five points today? This is a three day rolling poll, so if the numbers are remotely correct, something weird happened. I’d love for somebody to ‘explain’ this since Rasmussen has not seemed off base before. T.J.
Yeah, tony, that occurred to me, too (the most famous example is the percentage of people who, post-assassination, said that they had voted for Kennedy–it was a huge percentage). In this case, the other numbers are not representative, either. 80 percent white, 10 percent black, 7 percent hispanic, whereas those last two numbers were in the 12-13 percent range in the 2000 census. What are the demographics of people who no longer have land lines, but only cell phones? Who will they vote for? Does any pollster know?
Remember that when people are asked who they voted for in 2000, it’s quite likely that some will be in error. Perhaps they did not actually vote, but want to identify with a winner, so they say they voted for Bush. Or perhaps they want to convince themselves they voted for a winner and so say they voted for Bush. Evidence of differential reported voting patterns in 2000 does not necessarily mean you’re looking at a nonrepresentative sample.
Never mind. I just found it’s the Democracy Corps poll.
Paul, what new poll are you referring to? The Democracy Corps survey? I know that the Time magazine poll had an similar unrepresentative majority of Bush 2000 voters.
The biggest difference between now and last month is that all polls switched to using LVs, which exaggerated bush bounce. Conversely it will also underestimate the drop in the bounce.
Page 19 of this new poll shows that of those who were polled, 43 percent voted for Gore in 2000, and 51 percent voted for Bush. Since we all remember that more people voted for Gore in 2000, there seems to be a bias in the polling sample towards Bush. There is no indication that the polling percentages were weighted to account for this, but it’s hard to believe that wouldn’t be taken into account.
What I don’t understand is how many news magazines are continuing to use poll data taken during the Republican convention. Today’s TIME had the same Sept. 7 poll that most newspapers stopped citing over a week ago.
Seems to me like in the information age the print media is always a bit behind the curve.
My post should say Kerry is leading by 1 among LVs.
timshel, They likely rounded off the numbers. If the Kerry number is 46.4 and the leaning Kerry is 1.4, that adds up to 47.8, which rounds off to 48.
Here’s more good polling news: Harris has Kerry leading by among LVs, and Bush’s reelect number is just 45 percent. I read this on the Wall Street Journal site.
Presumably roundoff error is playing a role here.
It looks to me like they have their own totals incorrect. When asked who you would vote for (or something similar),
46% said Kerry
1% said Lean Kerry
48% said Bush
1% said Lean Bush.
Wouldn’t that mean the poll shows Bush ahead 49 to 47, as opposed to 49 to 48?