A few days ago, I highlighted some recent polls that showed solid leads for Kerry in the battleground states as a whole, states that were split about evenly between Gore and Bush four years ago.
Since then, Democracy Corps has released new data showing more of the same (a 7 point lead for Kerry in the battleground states). And Mystery Pollster looks at a substantially wider range of recent polls and finds Kerry’s battleground performance running ahead of his national performance in every single one. As Chris Bowers points out over at MyDD, these data show Kerry averaging a 49-45 advantage in the battleground.
And, not to pile on, but check but the latest unemployment data from the battleground states. Not a pretty picture, by and large, for BC04: Wisconsin and Iowa show increases in their unemployment rates in the last month and Ohio’s remains stubbornly high at 6 percent.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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March 28: RIP Joe Lieberman, a Democrat Who Lost His Way
I was sorry to learn of the sudden death of 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman. But his long and stormy career did offer some important lessons about party loyalty, which I wrote about at New York:
Joe Lieberman was active in politics right up to the end. The former senator was the founding co-chair of the nonpartisan group No Labels, which is laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign on behalf of a yet-to-be-identified bipartisan “unity ticket.” Lieberman did not live to see whether No Labels will run a candidate. He died on Wednesday at 82 due to complications from a fall. But this last political venture was entirely in keeping with his long career as a self-styled politician of the pragmatic center, which often took him across party boundaries.
Lieberman’s first years in Connecticut Democratic politics as a state legislator and then state attorney general were reasonably conventional. He was known for a particular interest in civil rights and environmental protection, and his identity as an observant Orthodox Jew also drew attention. But in 1988, the Democrat used unconventional tactics in his challenge to Republican U.S. senator Lowell Weicker. Lieberman positioned himself to the incumbent’s right on selected issues, like Ronald Reagan’s military operations against Libya and Grenada. He also capitalized on longtime conservative resentment of his moderate opponent, winning prized endorsements from William F. and James Buckley, icons of the right. Lieberman won the race narrowly in an upset.
Almost immediately, Senator Lieberman became closely associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. The group of mostly moderate elected officials focused on restoring the national political viability of a party that had lost five of the six previous presidential elections; it soon produced a president in Bill Clinton. Lieberman became probably the most systematically pro-Clinton (or in the parlance of the time, “New Democrat”) member of Congress. This gave his 1998 Senate speech condemning the then-president’s behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal as “immoral” and “harmful” a special bite. He probably did Clinton a favor by setting the table for a reprimand that fell short of impeachment and removal, but without question, the narrative was born of Lieberman being disloyal to his party.
Perhaps it was his public scolding of Clinton that convinced Al Gore, who was struggling to separate himself from his boss’s misconduct, to lift Lieberman to the summit of his career. Gore tapped the senator to be his running mate in the 2000 election, making him the first Jewish vice-presidential candidate of a major party. He was by all accounts a disciplined and loyal running mate, at least until that moment during the Florida recount saga when he publicly disclaimed interest in challenging late-arriving overseas military ballots against the advice of the Gore campaign. You could argue plausibly that the ticket would have never been in a position to potentially win the state without Lieberman’s appeal in South Florida to Jewish voters thrilled by his nomination to become vice-president. But many Democrats bitter about the loss blamed Lieberman.
As one of the leaders of the “Clintonian” wing of his party, Lieberman was an early front-runner for the 2004 presidential nomination. A longtime supporter of efforts to topple Saddam Hussein, Lieberman had voted to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq, like his campaign rivals John Kerry and John Edwards and other notable senators including Hillary Clinton. Unlike most other Democrats, though, Lieberman did not back off this position when the Iraq War became a deadly quagmire. Ill-aligned with his party to an extent he did not seem to perceive, his presidential campaign quickly flamed out, but not before he gained enduring mockery for claiming “Joe-mentum” from a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire.
Returning to the Senate, Lieberman continued his increasingly lonely support for the Iraq War (alongside other heresies to liberalism, such as his support for private-school education vouchers in the District of Columbia). In 2006, Lieberman drew a wealthy primary challenger, Ned Lamont, who soon had a large antiwar following in Connecticut and nationally. As the campaign grew heated, President George W. Bush gave his Democratic war ally a deadly gift by embracing him and kissing his cheek after the State of the Union Address. This moment, memorialized as “The Kiss,” became central to the Lamont campaign’s claim that Lieberman had left his party behind, and the challenger narrowly won the primary. However, Lieberman ran against him in the general election as an independent, with significant back-channel encouragement from the Bush White House (which helped prevent any strong Republican candidacy). Lieberman won a fourth and final term in the Senate with mostly GOP and independent votes. He was publicly endorsed by Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, among others from what had been the enemy camp.
The 2006 repudiation by his party appeared to break something in Lieberman. This once-happiest of happy political warriors, incapable of holding a grudge, seemed bitter, or at the very least gravely offended, even as he remained in the Senate Democratic Caucus (albeit as formally independent). When his old friend and Iraq War ally John McCain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, Lieberman committed a partisan sin by endorsing him. His positioning between the two parties, however, still cost him dearly: McCain wanted to choose him as his running mate, before the Arizonan’s staff convinced him that Lieberman’s longtime pro-choice views and support for LGBTQ rights would lead to a convention revolt. The GOP nominee instead went with a different “high-risk, high-reward” choice: Sarah Palin.
After Barack Obama’s victory over Lieberman’s candidate, the new Democratic president needed every Democratic senator to enact the centerpiece of his agenda, the Affordable Care Act. He got Lieberman’s vote — but only after the senator, who represented many of the country’s major private-insurance companies, forced the elimination of the “public option” in the new system. It was a bitter pill for many progressives, who favored a more robust government role in health insurance than Obama had proposed.
By the time Lieberman chose to retire from the Senate in 2012, he was very near to being a man without a party, and he reflected that status by refusing to endorse either Obama or Mitt Romney that year. By then, he was already involved in the last great project of his political career, No Labels. He did, with some hesitation, endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016. But his long odyssey away from the yoke of the Democratic Party had largely landed him in a nonpartisan limbo. Right up until his death, he was often the public face of No Labels, particularly after the group’s decision to sponsor a presidential ticket alienated many early supporters of its more quotidian efforts to encourage bipartisan “problem-solving” in Congress.
Some will view Lieberman as a victim of partisan polarization, and others as an anachronistic member of a pro-corporate, pro-war bipartisan elite who made polarization necessary. Personally, I will remember him as a politician who followed — sometimes courageously, sometimes foolishly — a path that made him blind to the singular extremism that one party has exhibited throughout the 21st century, a development he tried to ignore to his eventual marginalization. But for all his flaws, I have no doubt Joe Lieberman remained until his last breath committed to the task he often cited via the Hebrew term tikkun olam: repairing a broken world.
AS to kerry needing to win more states:
with regard to red blue states that are strong for either one diff of just 20 votes:
Bush has 216 EV
Kerry: 194 EV
Weak states, where the state is at some risk to go to one or the other, usually trending but within margin of error, and not taking into account undecidededs
Bush Weak: 74
kerry Weak: 45
Bush is at more risk (note the 30 vote difference)
Undecided EV where they are tied or different polls og to each one: 128 EV
Taking in account just decided voters the election is very close, if undecideds are factored in Kerry is ahead
I’m encouraged by this post, but there are caveats. I don’t see that the link identifies the “Battleground States”. Also, it identifies a 7% lead based on Democracy Corps polls, which are partisan and lean democratic, at least by 2-3 points, typically, compared to media polls. Also, Kerry needs to win a lot more of the battleground states than Bush, since the Bush safe states comprise a lot more electoral votes than the Kerry safe states, and most battleground states are blue. In short, this is a very “tweakable” statistic, and we need a lot more information.
http://www.electoral-vote.com is an ok site, but very simplistic. they take the latest poll and go with that, no detailed statistical analysis. the Hawaii issue is a good one, Hawaii is NOT going to go to Bush, every poll has kerry with a large lead and anybody who have leved there know its as likley to to to Bush as MA. the problem was a bogus poll reported in some blogs had bush barely ahead. Everbody is discounting the poll, yet http://www.electoral-vote.com used it to give state to bush
If you really want a true analyssi of the state of the college and the cahnges for Kerry go to
http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/pollcalc.html
Sam Wang does what is know as a meta-analysis. it may be beyond most readers math level, but he does several million calcualtions and calculates the probability of every possible outcome and then does a 50th-percentile (expected) outcome, as well as a 95-percent confidence interval.
for today its
Predicted median with undecideds: Kerry 307 EV, Bush 231 EV (probability map)
Median outcome, decided voters only: Kerry 259 EV, Bush 279 EV
Among decided voters: Bush leads Kerry by 0.5%
so the election is very close with just decideds, taking into account undecideds Kerry is way ahead.
There is encouraging news Monday from two tracking polls that have had Bush ahead for weeks and weeks until today. Kerry now leads Bush in the just updated Washington Post tracking poll and the Rasmussen tracking poll. No doubt these polls have their flaws, but as relative measures (relative to themsleves) they are both showing a clear tend over the last three days of Kerry picking up strenghth. I belive it’s starting to break pretty clearly for Kerry.
Re: zogby
why do people keep insisting on treating one pollster as if they are the end all- be all of polling on either the left or right? There are multiple polls so why not take the approach of reading ALL polls in context. Now, as one poster here mentions below, the problem comes when its hard to figure out the context.
from electoral-vote.com website: highlighting wild swings in current polling.
In contrast to previous Mondays, there are many new polls today, with 19 states getting new numbers (although most didn’t change sides). In addition to the ususual polls, Zogby has begun daily tracking polls in 10 battleground states, which I will also toss into the hopper. According to Zogby’s polls, conducted Oct. 21-24, Bush is currently leading in six states (FL, NM, NV, WI, IA, and OH), while Kerry is leading in four states (CO, MN, PA, MI). Some of these results are very surprising. Is Kerry really leading by 4% in Colorado? Is Bush really leading by 5% in New Mexico? I don’t believe either of those. They are in conflict with too many other polls. Another example: the current Ohio University poll gives Kerry a 6% lead in that state, whereas Zogby puts Bush ahead by 5%. The MoE on these polls is 4%, so an 11% change in a couple of days in a state with so few undecideds is impossible. I think there are serious problems with the all the polls.
What you have to remember about electoral-vote.com is that he only uses the most recent
poll as opposed to doing any averaging or tracking.
Also, he doesn’t do things which I do as a
matter of course: 1) subtract 2 points from
Bush on all SUSA, Rasmussen, Strategic Vision,
and Mason-Dixon polls and give them to Kerry;
2) Throw out Gallup polls altogether; 3) simulate new-for-this-election voters by giving a net 2% to Kerry where applicable; and 4) give
undecideds to Kerry by a large margin
(67%/75%/80%/86%, to see the effects of each).
This is a good blog, but annoyingly one-sided at times. I always need to hold my nose and browse the ‘winger blogs for the polls and news Ruy does *not* mention. It seems this week’s Monday hasn’t been a good day for Kerry in the state polls; Slate, electoral-vote.com, PollingReport.com and (of course-) the right-wing pair of FederalReview.com and ElectionProjection.com all report “Shrub” is ahead, albeit not by much. But thanks to “Shrub’s” gains in the smaller Mid-Western states and the Southwest (including Hawaii of all places!), there are now reasonably credible scenarios where Kerry wins *all* three major battleground states (PA, OH, FL) and still loses. I don’t like this at all.
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I don’t think this signals the beginning of a trend (last week was generally pretty good) since the poll movements have been fairly small. But I will be nervously watching the President’s approval ratings during this week. If they suddenly start moving above the 50% mark, it’s not a very good sign for Nov.2.
MARCU$
Are the polls accurate? Is Bush really up by 2-3 points? Zogby has Bush up by 2, for instance. I went over to 2.004k.com and counted up sure state winners for Kerry. I came up with 253 electoral votes without even trying. That leaves Florida, Iowa (my state, where early voting gives Kerry the lead, and GOTV in heavily Democratic Johnson County alone is going on 24/7), Colorado, Hawaii, and Arkansas…what am I forgetting?–all states Kerry could easily win. Anyone?
Wow!
Kerry leads Bush by 2 in the latest Rasmussen. Anyone have any idea why there is a disconnect between Rasmussen and Zogby? And, yes I remain obsessed!
Jody
Alan is right, these tracking polls are nuts. Rasmussen has Kerry two points ahead, Zogby has Bush ahead +3, and TIPP has Bush up by +8! The ABC and WaPost are not out yet but yesterday they had Bush a mere +1.
I always believed the tracking polls provided a better snapshop of public opinion but it seems the survey polls are more consistent lately.
It will be fascinating to see how the news about the 380 tons of missing pure high explosives impacts the final days of the race.
Whoa! Rasmussen today shows a 2-point lead for Kerry! This seems to run counter to the Zogby poll today, which shows Bush’s lead expanding to 3 points…but I think GW had an unusually good day of Zogby polling on Friday or Saturday.
The site (www.electoral-vote.com) does swing widely. They use a number of polls that are paid by political parties (notably, the Strategic Vision poll paid for by Republicans). These tend to favor the people paying for the polls.
Zogby’s battleground state polls out today seem to be throwing everything towards Republicans. However, the numbers are out of whack with conventional wisdom (undecideds going toward Bush, Hispanics towards Bush, etc.?). I am not ready to accept those numbers. It’s almost like they got something backwards (????). I know based on the phone calls I made in San Diego County for the Kerry/Edwards campaign, I did not have a single Hispanic out of 30 that said they favored Bush. I think we need to see a few more days worth of data before we believe those numbers.
Is it me or has Zogby’s polls gone crazy in the last week?Bush’s lead is widening, Kerry’s support is dropping out among all groups. He has this quote today
“The President has opened up a 12-point lead among Independents and now also leads among those voters with active passports.”
Virtually every other poll I’ve seen has Kerry ahead by 10 points or so among independent voters. What does the active passports comment have to do with anything, anyway? I have no idea what influence voters with passports have.
To make things more strange, Kerry’s down in almost all the swing states. The ones that seem most strange to me are the 4 point lead in Colorado (Kerry 49, Bush 45), and Bush’s 5 point lead in Ohio (Kerry 42, Bush 47).
I had been believing Zogby’s numbers were more reliable than most, as he and CBS were the only ones to predict the 2000 election for Gore. The also always had the race closer than the rest of the polls. These numbers just keep getting more bizarre though.
Any thoughts?
Justin
Electoral-Vote.com is a good site. Which is why after visiting it this morning and seeing Bush jump ahead signifincantly in their prediction, I had to come here to make sense of it.
There is one thing that bothers me though. Sure, we keep on saying that the undecideds generally go to the challenger this close to the election. Also, we’ve been complaining about the LV qualifications and questions in that they underrepresent minorites and youth. But couldn’t LV question underrepresent unintellectual Bush voters as well? Say they only get 3 out of the 7 questions wrong and so the pollster doesn’t consider them likely, that doesn’t mean they AREN’T voting for Bush. Both sides have quite an energized base. And I think we’ve almost reached the point that undecideds really aren’t going to be deciding this election, “base turnout” will.
He sure does have a link section, scroll down, it’s on the right.
I certainly empathize with the unemployed in Ohio, and understand that the official unemployment rate is lower than the real unemployment rate; but I wonder how they would like to try on the unemployment rate here in central California–it is typically double the current rate in Ohio *when times are good.* When times are bad, it goes over 20%. And the area votes Republican (big surprise).
I keep seeing references to campaign “internal polls”. How can these really be different from the published ones? Aren’t they taken by the same doofusses, and subject to the same rather larger errors? Don’t organizations like Zogby also do internal or private polling for politicians? I wish someone could shed some light on this.
I’ve been checking out this site lately and they have gone from Kerry in the lead to swinging wide for Bush with the recent polls. As he says himself, he isn’t sure he believes most of them.
Interestingly, he is taking undecided voters into account; saying that they usually go for the challenger.
http://www.electoral-vote.com
Ruy, you should do a post (or have a link section) with all of the poll data sites you are aware of (or, the good ones anyway.) Its nice to see how different people read the tea leaves.
Ruy, you say, “And, not to pile on, but…”
As far as I’m concerned, on this subject you can pile on all you’d like. And more.
🙂
Zogby has Bush turning it around in OH….Any info on the Zogby detail — party ID, etc.?
Eric
Quite possibly, something very real might lie behind the disparity between the head-to-heads in the battleground states and the head-to-heads nationally.
It may be, for example, that the message that gets out to voters in the battleground states is qualitatively (and perhaps quantitatively) different from what gets through to voters in other states. One obvious difference is that the battleground states get more information, because there are so many campaign events and so much advertising, while in the other states it is only the free media that communicates anything at all. Moreover, the message of the candidates is also mainly geared to the circumstances and concerns of the battleground states.
It’s quite possible that the Kerry message that gets through to voters in battleground states is just distinctly more effective than the message that the free media communicates in the other states.
If true, one very curious consequence might very well be that there will a large gap between the popular voter and the electoral vote, with Bush doing very well, perhaps even winning, the popular vote, by running up the vote in non-battleground states (in both the states he will certainly lose and the states he will certainly win), but losing decisively nonetheless in the electoral vote.
I would like to know what bloggers and the like can do the make explosives-gate as important a political issue as possible.
Explosives-gate is, of course, the recent reports that over 350 tons of high explosives were taken from an unsecured ammunition facility and that the ***Bush administration attempted to keep news about this from being released*** until after the election.
I think this should really dent Bush’s perception that he can be trusted to wage either the war in Iraq or the war on terror.