Bush leads Kerry 47-43 percent of Nevada LV’s, according to a Sun Channel/KNPR Poll conducted 10/16-19.
Bush is ahead of Kerry 49-47 percent of Nevada LV’s, according to a Reno Gazette-Journal/News 4 Poll conducted 10/19-21.
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.
Regarding Steve’s question above, on election day undecided voters historically tend to vote 2 to 1 for the challenger (sometimes 3 to 1) so what you tend to see is a late movement for the challenger compared to the final polls.
The net effect of all this is that the incumbent’s actual poll number (Bush) reflects his ceiling, the max he can get, where as the challenger’s real number will be much higher than his current polling.
So where Bush is below 50% he is likely to be overtaken by the late surge for Kerry (according to the rule of thumb)
Please help me to understand. In the individual state
polls. If Bush is leading (by whatever margin), then
what differance does it make if he is below 50 ?
WaPo tracking poll just out shows Bush margin over Kerry by 1%–down from 4% yesterday. (But another Hawaii poll shows Bush up one point). T.J.
The two Nevada polls are encouraging, as are Rasmussen’s statewide polls for Michigan and Iowa. Also, Rasmussen shows Bush and Kerry separated by less than 1/2%. The ABC tracking poll now has Bush up by a mere 1%, while stating that Kerry had his best day of polling yesterday (Saturday) since October 2nd. That conflicts with Zogby who reports that on Saturday Bush reached 50% for the first time, with Kerry at 43%. Confusing, isn’t it? I think that this wide disparity in the polls reflects the fact that Kerry has large undereported support among young voters who 1) have only a cell phone, or 2) are more likely to be unavailable when surveyers call. I firmly believe that the nation will be surprised when this previously unheard from block of voters flock to the polls in record numbers.
I hope I’m not just seeing through blue-tinted glasses, but this and other recent posts seem to support the “undecideds breaking for challenger” assumption:
In both FL and NV, whichever poll finds the lower number of undecideds also has a better Kerry number. And in my home state of TN, a just-released Mason-Dixon poll –
http://tennessean.com/elections/2004/archives/04/09/60256115.shtml?Element_ID=60256115
– shows Kerry going from 16 points down to 12 down, *exactly* matching a 4-point decrease in undecideds from a month ago. I don’t hold out much hope for TN, but if this kind of evidence continues to mount, we may be in for some very pleasant surprises wherever Bush is at 49% or less.
And from this perspective the 43-43 “tie” in Hawaii is nothing to lose sleep over–unless of course you can use your insomnia to make GOTV calls to an appropriate time zone.
Nevada’s polls are open. I’m on my way up to work the precincts. Start the surge for Kerry!
Best Bumper Sticker of 2004 campaign was found in Puerto Vallarta, Mx:
“Pull the Cheney…Flush Bush”…only eight more days…hallelujah..goyo
WOW!!!
Maine Kerry 50
Bush 49
Zogby Intl..(I know)
This will be the week of the Great Breakout
Polishing the Ann Richards Turkey Fork
Ruy, what do you make of the Hawaii poll that has it dead even at 43%, with 10% undecided. I spend part of the year there and Hawaii’s about as Democratic as it gets so its shocking. Friends in Hawaii say it’s unlikely that Bush could win there, a little campaigning by Inouye for his veteran buddy Kerry is all what’s needed I was told.