For a while there, the independent ticket of ex-Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan seemed to be taking crucial votes away from Democrat Joe Biden, at least as indicated by comparing three-way and five-way (with Cornel West and Jill Stein) polls to head-to-head matchups of the incumbent and Donald Trump. Now, even as Biden has all but erased his polling deficit against Trump, he’s getting some more good news in surveys that include other candidates.
Two recent major national polls show Biden running better in a five-way than a two-way race. According to NBC News, Biden moves from two points down to two points up when the non-major-party candidates are included. In the latest Marist poll, Biden leads Trump by three points head-to-head and by five points in a five-way race. Since left-bent candidates West and Stein are pulling 5 percent in the former poll and 4 percent in the latter (presumably taking very few votes from Trump), you have to figure Kennedy is beginning to cut into the MAGA vote to an extent that should get Team Trump’s attention. And it has, NBC News reports:
“Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he’s confident that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will pull more votes away from President Joe Biden than from him — a net win for the Republican’s candidacy.
“’He is Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine,’Trump wrote on Truth Social late last month. ‘I love that he is running!’
“Behind closed doors, however, Trump is less sure. A Republican who was in the room with Trump this year as he reviewed polling said Trump was unsure how Kennedy would affect the race, asking the other people on hand whether or not Kennedy was actually good for his candidacy.”
Politico notes that Kennedy is drawing higher favorability numbers from Republican voters than from Democratic ones, which could indicate a higher ceiling for RFJ Jr. among Trump defectors. And it’s generally assumed from his past performances that there is a lower ceiling on Trump’s support than on Biden’s; he needs to be able to win with significantly less than a majority of the popular vote, as one Republican told Politico:
“’If the Trump campaign doesn’t see this as a concern, then they’re delusional,’ Republican consultant Alice Stewart said. ‘They should be looking at this from the standpoint that they can’t afford to lose any voters — and certainly not to a third-party candidate that shares some of [Trump’s] policy ideas.’”
One likely reason that Kennedy could be appealing to Republicans is the residual effect from the positive attention he received from conservative media when he was running against Biden in the Democratic primaries; his identification with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories also resonates more positively on the right side of the political spectrum than the left. So it’s in the interest of Team Trump to begin telling the former president’s sympathizers that RFK Jr. is actually a lefty, and that started happening recently, as the New York Times reported: “Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, pointed in particular to Mr. Kennedy’s views on climate change and the environment, writing on his social media site that Mr. Kennedy was more ‘radical Left’ than Mr. Biden.”
The idea, of course, is not only to discourage potential Trump voters from drifting toward the independent candidate, but to encourage potential Biden voters to consider a Kennedy vote.
If Kennedy continues to draw votes from both Biden and Trump, each of their campaigns will need to make a strategic decision about how to deal with him: Do you ignore him and count on the usual fade in support afflicting non-major-party presidential candidates as Election Day nears, or do you attack him as too far left (if you’re Trump) or too far right (if you’re Biden) and try to make him a handicap to your major-party opponent? The more aggressive approach has become common among Democrats seeking to intervene in Republican primaries (or in the recent case of the California Senate race, a nonpartisan top-two primary) by loudly attacking candidates they’d prefer to face in the general election, encouraging Republicans to flock to the supposed menace to progressivism. This kind of tactic — if deployed with some serious dollars — could have an effect on Kennedy’s base of support.
Certainly Trump seems to be considering it. With his usual practice of saying the quiet part out loud, Trump opined: “If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden, because he’s frankly more in line with Democrats.”
Trying to minimize losses to Kennedy and maximize opposite-party votes for Kennedy could become a routine practice down the stretch. Where and by whom this strategy is pursued will depend in part on where RFK Jr. is ultimately on the ballot. Right now he has nailed down ballot access in just two states, Utah and Michigan. CBS News reports the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is close to securing a spot on the November ballot in a number of other states:
“Kennedy’s campaign says it has completed signature gathering in seven other states in addition to Utah and Michigan — Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nebraska and Iowa.
“The super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, says it has collected enough signatures in Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina.”
Coping with Kennedy could become a game of three-dimensional chess between the Biden and Trump campaigns. But if it begins to look like RFK Jr. has become an existential threat to Democrats or to Republicans, you can bet they’ll go medieval on him without even a moment’s hesitation.
While Gallup is finding Bush comfortably ahead of Kerry in Wisconsin, Sen Russ Feingold (D-WI) is ahead by more than 20 over his GOP challenger. I know we’re famous for ticket-splitting, but it’s not very likely that we’d go overwhelmingly for a liberal like Feingold AND go for Bush. Gallup is no longer worthy of reading or reporting.
Dana, you speak of the love that I dare not speak its name – the SWEEP.
I hope it is coming, and I agree with your logic.
I’ve been telling anyone who will listen we are going to win by 5 million votes.
I hope we have enough to take back the House. We have to stop those crazy rightwingers by rooting out their nest.
The intensity on both sides is intense. I doubt that there will be a Democratic majority in either the House or the Senate.
But the intensity on the side of the Democrats is a good thing. The Republicans have had good turnout for years, but not the Democrats. I’m hoping that there will be some surprises on Nov 2nd.
Excerpt from James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans:
“We have decided that we’ll try Rumsfeld working with Gallup. He went to school with George [Gallup] Jr. at Princeton,” Colson told the president in July 1971. Nixon and Colson were eager to try to influence the results of major pollsters, notably Gallup and Harris, perhaps getting them to phrase their questions or to present their results in ways that were helpful to Nixon. “I mean, if the figures aren’t up there, we don’t want them to lie about it,” Nixon explained to Colson at one point. “They can trim them a little one way or another.” [Note 40: Nixon phone call to Colson, July 23, 1971, conversation 6-197, Nixon tape collection, National Archives.] …
RUMSFELD: Say, I want to just report, sir, about my conversation with George Gallup [Jr.].
NIXON: Oh yeah, you went to school with him, didn’t you?
RUMSFELD: I did. And I kind of want to be awful careful about telling people around the building that I’m talking to him. Because all he’s got in his business is his integrity.
Rumsfeld then informed Nixon an upcoming Gallup Poll would show that the president’s popularity had recently gone up. [Note 41: Nixon conversation with Rumsfeld, October 19, 1971, conversation 11-135, Nixon tape collection, National Archives.]
http://www.ufppc.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=759&Itemid=2
Okay, call me paranoid, but maybe Gallup is deliberately”gaming its polls to give cover to the Republicans who appear to be doing their dead-level best to steal the election in Florida and in Ohio. If Bush “miraculously” pulls ahead by four or five points on election day, the media will simply point to these convenient Gall-up polls, announce Bush would have won anyways—look at those Gallup polls–tell Democrats that they should just Get Over It.
I’m predicting a Kerry victory—I think just too many Democrats will show up in the polls for the GOP to scare off or intimidate or spin away. And I also predict that Gall-up won’t be short of clients. CNN will continue to buy their services. Or (worst-case scenario) Gall-up will lose a few media contracts, but be more than compensated by all the new right-wing think tank business.
Question: Has any pollster come up with a methology for correlating the intensity of support for a candidate or party with final results?
In 1994 polls showed a fairly close Congressional election, but there was great intensity among Republicans (remember the “revenge of the white men?”) and they won Congress.
In 1986, however, there was greater intensity among Democrats, something not found in polls, and you had some huge upsets, like Wyche Fowler in Georgia.
My own guess on intensity shows it off the charts on the Democratic side, slightly elevated on the Republican. This points toward a huge Democratic swing, absolute control of Congress and a landslide for Kerry.
But I’m not a statistician, and I don’t know how you could measure it with a poll.
Any thoughts?
The Bushites are scared. Bush visited WI again today. Even the Rep that was on NPR admitted that WI appears to be trending towards Kerry Edwards.
Isn’t the best evidence that this is total horse—– the fact that Bush is campaigning frenetically in these states. I would have thought that 9% would mean going somewhere really close.
CNN & USA Today must fire Gallup
If this election proves that the Gallup methodology is flawed and their flaws show a tilt to one side then we should compell CNN & USA Today to fire Gallup. Recently CNN interviewed Gallup and asked him about the poll discrepencies…his answer was that their LV model was better. When asked about the ‘bandwagon effect’ (do polls effect how people view the candidates and do they become a Self-fulfilling Prophecy Frank actually said “would that be a bad thing?..people should factor polls into their decisions”.
Therefore if they turn out to be ‘idiots’ we should immediately do to CNN & USA Today what we did to Sinclair and force them to drop Gallup
Ok, it’s only a week before the elction and my paranoia is running rampant. Could it be that the Gallup poll is providing cover for rampant electronic voting fraud?
Happy Halloween!
Kilroy
Gallup is really walking the plank on this election. But a lot of the blame rests on CNN and USATODAY for spreading the baloney poll results around and paying Gallup a lot of $. An important goal is to try to get CNN and USATODAY to dissociate themselves from Gallup. It’s impossible for this election, but possible for the future.
Actually they will look like geniuses or SHILLS. I don’t think there’s a lot of doubt about which, but we’ll know in a week.
Read The Vulcans. There is chapter about Rumsfeld’s rise during the Nixon Administration. One of his duties during Dick’s re-election was to game the Gallup brothers. While Rummie wouldn’t get the Gallup poll to lie, he would get advance warning of the poll’s findings.
Seems this year, he is getting the Gallup poll to lie.
Their huge pro-GOP sample bias in Florida certainly speaks for itself. However, what about the latest Gallup poll for Ohio, which was released a day after their latest Wisconsin poll:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/polls/2004-10-21-ohio-poll.htm
It showed Kerry up 48-47 among LVs, and a startling 50-44 Kerry lead among RVs! Huh? Most Ohio polls are looking pretty good for Kerry, but 50-44? Isn’t that a bit much?