John Kerry leads George Bush among LV’s in: in FL +1; PA +6; OR +9 and WA +7. He trails Bush in: AR -5 and NC -3 (stat. tie), according to SurveyUSA Polls conducted 10/15-17.
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 26: Kennedy Now Taking As Many Votes From Trump As From Biden
Polls are showing a subtle but potentially important shift that I discussed at New York:
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.
The MN numbers sure sound like they match on the Lawn sign war!
Since this is a thread on state data, I thought it would be helpful to have some pre/post debate apple-to-apple comparisons of state polling data. So…I went to race2004.net for a list of state polling data. Before examining the data, I selected surveys dated their from 9/15 to 9/30 as pre-debate, surveys dated 10/10 or later as post-debate. I found 36 polls across 22 states that were represented in both time periods. In 25 of those polls, Kerry gained. Another 6 showed no change. Another 5 showed Bush gaining. The median change was a 2% Kerry gain. The average change was 2.44% toward Kerry. I don’t know that this tells us where things stand in the electoral college right now, but it sure does suggest that Kerry gained some ground with the debates. Here’s the list, from largest Kerry gain to largest Bush gain:
Ohio, Ohio Poll, Kerry +11
Oregon, SUSA, Kerry +10
Iowa, Rasmussen, Kerry +7
South Carolina, SUSA, Kerry +7
New York, SUSA, Kerry +7
New Jersey, Rasmussen, Kerry +6
New Jersey, Strategic Vision (R), Kerry +5
Georgia, SUSA, Kerry +5
Michigan, Rasmussen, Kerry +4
Arkansas, SUSA, Kerry +4
Ohio, Strategic Vision (R), Kerry +4
Pennsylvania, Rasmussen, Kerry +4
New Jersey, Quinnipiac, Kerry +4
New Hampshire, Research 2000, Kerry +4
Alabama, Rasmussen, Kerry +3
Iowa, Strategic Vision (R), Kerry +2
Wisconsin, Strategic Vision (R), Kerry +2
Michigan, Strategic Vision (R), Kerry +2
Pennsylvania, Strategic Vision (R), Kerry +2
Rhode Island, SUSA, Kerry +2
Illinois, Rasmussen, Kerry +2
South Dakota, Rasmusen, Kerry +2
Washington, SUSA, Kerry +2
Minnesota, Strategic Vision (R), Kerry +1
Arkansas, Rasmussen, Kerry +1
Minnesota, Rasmussen, no change
Wisconsin, Rasmussen, no change
Ohio, Rasmussen, no change
Florida, Rasmussen, no change
Pennsylvania, Quinipiac, no change
New Jersey, FD Univ, no change
Oregon, Research 2000, Bush +1
Arkansas, Zogby, Bush +2
Texas, SUSA, Bush +2
Oklahoma, Wilson Res (R), Bush +5
California, Rasmussen, Bush +5
Could Ruy or someone else on the site comment on the WaPo and Rasmussen aggregate “swing state” poll numbers? These have been looking good, but I’ve never seen anything that discusses whether an aggregate result among a group of swing states really tells you anything useful about the EV outcome for those states would be.
No to mention that the Newark Star Ledger has Kerry up by +13 in God’s Country, and the CBS poll, which has the horserace tied, shows the prez approval at only 44%. Surely, if the latter is close to being right, Bush is in big trouble.
Anyone have a quote for Zogby calling a Kerry win ?
I just read that Zogby went out on a limb and predicted that Kerry was going to be the 44th president. He said that there is more to polling than statistics:
‘Polling can be uncertain only if you rely on statistics alone,’ is Mr Zogby’s riposte. ‘That’s why an effective pollster has to rely on culture, history and sociology. I repeat, polling is the study of human behaviour, not simply a sampling of people’s preferences.’
That may well explain his success. His big test will come on Nov 2. In Singapore last Friday, he flatly predicted that Mr Kerry would become the 44th President of the United States.
I sure hope he’s right. It’s comforting to know that he was one of the 2 polls to get it right in 2000.
Hg
I still say that the Kerry campaign must stop Dukakissing on the Bai article like they did on the flipflop spin. My guess is that, with the same performance in the debates, if he had prodded the press on the flipflop issue along the lines of Chait’s article in the 10/18 New Republic SIX MONTHS ago, and dismissed it as a mere spin in the ways I’ve suggested since, and put forward an NYU+ length speech to counter Bush’s monday blowout in NJ on terror, and challenged the Bai spin, and the media that have magnified its already distorted portrayal, he would be running consistently ahead by 4-5 points in the polls, and pulling along Democrats into the House and Senate too. In an honest election, where the Clarke interview with Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11, where he points out 9/12 Bush was only interested in Iraq ACROSS THE COUNTRY — the Republicans would be in trouble in both Houses of Congress and would have a 92 type futile race for the White House. But that’s not the agenda.
In another thread I noted that it is probably appropriate for pollsters to assume a higher Republican turnout (as a percentage of registered Republicans) than Democratic turnout (as a percentage of registered Democrats). I was surprised that a few posters chose to attack this observation (some quite forcefully). This I believe is a well-documented phenomenon of American politics. It stems from the fact that Republicans tend to be more affluent, more focused on politics, have better access to the polls, etc. Some asked for statistics backing this up, so I went and looked up turnout statistics for some California counties. Obviously this is not a rigorous analysis, but what I found does indicate that Republicans turnout in greater percentages than Democrats. And I’ve read in many places that this is true nationally – I’ll provide cites as they turn up. Some people on this blog just don’t like to hear this apparently, and seem to suggest as a point of contention that I’m saying Republicans turn out in greater total numbers – I’m not. The advantage in Democratic party id partially or totally offsets the higher Republican turnout percentage to some extent. As an example, here’s results from Contra Costa county, which is heavily democratic and went for Al Gore in 2000:
Registration & Turnout
Democratic
Completed Precincts: 907 of 907
Reg/Turnout Percentage
Democratic Registration 223,155
PRECINCT REGISTRATION 223,155
PRECINCT BALLOTS CAST 99,416 44.6%
ABSENTEE BALLOTS CAST 37,480 16.8%
TOTAL BALLOTS CAST 136,896 61.3%
Registration & Turnout
Republican
Completed Precincts: 907 of 907
Reg/Turnout Percentage
Republican Registration 153,790
PRECINCT REGISTRATION 153,790
PRECINCT BALLOTS CAST 71,717 46.6%
ABSENTEE BALLOTS CAST 32,706 21.3%
TOTAL BALLOTS CAST 104,423 67.9%
Notice that Gore carried the county by ~31,000 votes, despite a registration advantage of 70,000. The reason for the narrower gap was the much higher Republican percentage turnout (68% R vs 61% D). If this is indeed indicative of national turnout habits, and I believe it is, then it is appropriate for Gallup to weight registered Democrats for 8% less turnout than registered Republicans. Alan asserts this is “totally unrealistic” – I disagree.
In my opinion, the big flaw in the Gallup polls is not the turnout weighting, but rather their insistence on oversampling registered Republicans. There just doesn’t seem to be a good reason for this. Their assertion that party id is fungible isn’t borne out by exit polls from the past several presidential elections. To gain an accurate sampling of the electorate, they should weight for best-known state or national party id distribution, as Zogby does, and also for expected party percentage turnout.
I think the NC poll is the most impressive. We’ll see how is really turns out though.
SUSA has the best record of any polling firm over the past 10 years.
I have to say, though, that I don’t place much trust in SUSA polls. These were the same people, after all, who called Maryland and New Jersey close in 2000, where Gore then went on to win by 15 points.
Although this isn’t the only poll I’ve seen with Kerry leading in Florida, so I’m inclined to believe he’s genuinely ahead.