John Kerry and George Bush are tied at 44 percent of Florida RV’s, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll conducted 10/22-26 .The Poll also found that, among the 16 percent of Flordians who have alread voted, Kerry leads by 56-39 percent.
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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.
“Quinnipiac Poll: Kerry, Bush tied Among FL RV’s
John Kerry and George Bush are tied at 44 percent of Florida RV’s, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll conducted 10/22-26 .The Poll also found that, among the 16 percent of Flordians who have alread voted, Kerry leads by 56-39 percent. ”
So does that mean that 5% of the people who voted are still undecided or is nader picking up those votes?
What can we discern if anything from the 16%? Are they coming from Democratic areas? Jebbie was making excuses recently on MTP about hurricane damage in Republican areas, with those affected having higher priorities than voting for Bush.
At this point, when a poll is posted, can you give a comparison to the most RECENT poll, from the same jurisdiction and pollster, so that TRENDS can be assessed. Then it would always be good to summarize what other polls are saying (eg the other two most recent Fla polls are also close, and trending from their previous polls in the same direction, w numbers.) It would take up just a little extra space but would make it much more easier to make sense amidst a blizzard of individual data bits.
The Broward County thing shows how completely easy it still is to steal elections. Note that the POSTAL SERVICE might be involved, which is national. “Oh but that’s forbidden!” Well, remember what the word “Law” means to Tory types like Bush. To them, obedience to (their) power is the holy writ of what THEY call ‘natural law’. Honest elections are mere dust in the balance by comparison. Only by an approach to modern methods of discovery that jettisons the catch-22s that applied in Florida 2000 can there be any chance of an honest election –(or fighting terrorism, but I’ll get into that after the election).
The means of stealing elections are so myriad, that only by aggressively pursuing what is underground, and not relying on the means of laundering these issues that exist within the system that exists for the PURPOSE of stealing/railroading elections and then laundering it, can people hope to have honest presidential and Congressional elections
Great news. Just a point of clarification regarding the sentence, “among the 16 percent of Flordians who have alread voted, Kerry leads by 56-39 percent.”
Does this mean,
a) 16% of all eligible voters in FL have already voted through early voting, and among those that have already voted, Kerry leads 56-39
OR
b) Among all voters who have voted through early voting, 16% of early voters have been polled and within that 16% sample of early voters, Kerry leads 56-39
Do you see the confusion? I can’t tell whether the 56-39 figure is representative of 100% of the early vote, and the early vote constitutes 16% of those eligible to vote on Nov. 2; or whether the 56-39 figure is representative of 16% of all early voters, and we don’t know what the ratio of people voting early represents among all people eligible to vte on Nov. 2.
I wrote a state-by-state synopsis called “The Gore States Today” at Daily Kos and thought I’d share it here, too:
http://dailykos.com/story/2004/10/28/132557/30
(Just copy and paste the URL into your browser if clicking on it doesn’t take you to the page.)
I wonder if that includes the missing 58,000 absentee ballots? 🙂
I agree, i am no expert but here is how i feel about it, in 2000 Bush had 49.2 % of the vote, he has less support now he is at about 47%-48%. People who are going to vote for him already know, everyone else who hasn’t made up their mind hasn’t made up their mind for a reason, becasue they don’t like something about Bush. Also, people regester to vote for a reason, even if only half of the new regestered voters vote, that will put kerry over the top, people don’t fight to keep the status-quo, the fight for change, and i think on election day, kerry will win by a comfortable margin, 30 votes in the true battle ground states.
No wonder there are reports this morning of Repub goons waiting outside early polling places in Florida, telling old ladies there are no elevators or air conditioning and that the wait is 6 hours long.
Can’t we DO something about those guys?