The new Gallup poll shows the race moving in Kerry’s direction. In their last poll, October 14-16, they showed Bush with a 4 point lead, 50-46 in their 2-way RV matchup. This poll, conducted October 22-24, has Bush’s lead shrinking to a single point (49-48).
Even Gallup’s bogus LV sample has Bush’s lead shrinking from its outlandish 8 points in the previous poll to a merely unbelievable 5 points in the current poll. (Of course, USA Today–shame on them!–leads with and heavily emphasizes the LV results in their story on the new poll.)
Subgroup analysis of the Gallup RV data shows several patterns very favorable to the Kerry campaign:
1. Kerry leads among independents by 5, 49-44.
2. Kerry leads among moderates by 18, 57-35.
3. Kerry leads in the battleground states by 2, 49-47, and Bush’s approval rating in these same states has sunk to 46 percent.
On to November 2.
TDS Strategy Memos
Latest Research from:
Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
-
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.
Can someone explain why–as repeatedly reported– if Kerry leads among independents, moderates, new voters, young voters, women voters, etc, Bush has any lead at all? Aside from men voters, where is Bush’s support coming from? Thanks!
I don’t think you can trust these “tracking” polls. They’re conducted in a way that maximizes efficiency, not robust sampling. In order to reach a desirable number of completes, they simply burn through sample, meaning that they don’t make callbacks to numbers that do not answer. This greatly increases non-response bias and representativeness.
This isn’t about polls but is about post election strategy. I’m a lawyer and have done voting rights for 30 years. I have little confidence in the courts to handle the election contests in a non-partisan way. For simplicity imagine a repeat of 2000; massive voter suppression, court challenges, court rulings on partisan lines with incredible opinions. Then what? Like last time, Democrats fold up their tents and say nice non-partisan unfifying things and turn our democracy over to the anti-democracy party for four more years? Follow John Lewis to a sit-in in Washington?
ABC, Washington Post and Rasmussen all have Kerry UP in the race as of Monday.
I’d call that a good trend.
Bush’s team knows they are in trouble, which is why they are focusing on getting out their base and suppressing vote. They know they need to get all their people out AND stop Kerry voters by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Evidently Zogby had a very weird polling day for Bush on Saturday. On that day, Bush had a 7 point lead. It’s a clear outlier, because no other poll is showing this type of movement in either direction. However, Zogby has also said that in the Sunday poll, Kerry was up by two points. Friday numbers will be dropped off tomorrow, so I would expect the 3% margin to either remain the same or decrease slighly. On Wednesday, though, you will see a much bigger movement towards Kerry.
I think Ruy posted below about the volatility of the daily tracking polls and how they can have wild swings. If that’s what you mean, scroll down.
As Steve Soto points out at the Left Coaster, this is actually even better news than it seems. The internals of the current Gallup sample show that it is even more biased in favor of Republicans, but yet Bush’s lead went down! More Republicans, less support! Yow, that’s gotta hurt.
Zogby posted their one day results for Friday and Saturday nights. Bush took Friday 49-46, Bush also took Saturday 50-43. However, the three day rolling average for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday has Bush up 48-45. This means that Kerry took Sunday 46-45. Let’s give the poll at least two more days to flush the 49 and 50 out of the rolling average. Then we’ll see how good the President-select is doing.
Btw, WP has Kerry up 49-48 and Rasmussen has Kerry up 48-46. Gallup has Bush up by only 1 point among registered voters, with Kerry up by 2 in the Battleground States.
What was the party ID breakdown? Steve Soto has a post up, and says that Ruy Teixeira contacted him with a correction of sorts, but Soto doesn’t explain what the correction is. Can Mr. Teixeira clue us in? (Soto, at “The LEft Coaster,” has a post up saying Gallup’s party IDs are even worse than before, but then has an update — based on Teixeira — which seems to question his own post.)
I am scratching my head over some of the internals on the recentl polls. Zogby has Bush
leading among Independents by 12%. CBS
and Gallup according to this latest poll have
Kerry up by 5% by Independents. The only
explanation I can think of for this anamoly is
sampling error or respondents are making up
answers to all of the poll calls. They must be
getting tired of the calls. I am a political junkie
and I am growing wearing of these polls
What’s up with Zogby? Are they still weighting according to 2000 exit polls (democrat advantage in sample)? If so, shouldn’t their current numbers be cause for concern?
—————-
thats what i thought but then i looked up the 2000 poll of 9 days before the election and it showed the same 3 point bush lead that we see now.
It doesnt mean anything, its all within the margin of error.
I have the same concerns as chillmoth. Gallup is one thing, but Zogby is a more reliable organization, and they have Bush pulling ahead. Is there any reason not to be troubled by this, aside from the 50% rule which Zogby says might not be in play this year?
Gallup?
I call them Foul-up.
They’re doing the same thing they did four years ago. They’re showing Bush up, but they will close it to 2-3 points in a week and act like that makes up for bogus reports the past 3 months.
Both Kerry and Castor pull ahead in Florida.
http://www.surveyusa.com/currentelectionpolls.html
Sometimes poll respondents are reluctant to express their true opinion.
1) They are talking to a stranger who may not be a legitimate pollster. Few people have heard of more than a few of the 20+ national polling organizations.
2) There may be someone else in the room listening, a person not sharing their opinion.
3) There is a reluctance to “go negative” on an an incumbent President. Especially if one is uncertain about who is calling.
In most urban areas. It is easy to acknowledge support of Democrats, even Nader. But in a suburban or rural community, it can invite unwanted attention if supporting anyone other than the Republicans.
The ballot is secret, but in telephone polling, Democrat support may be understated.
What’s up with Zogby? Are they still weighting according to 2000 exit polls (democrat advantage in sample)? If so, shouldn’t their current numbers be cause for concern?