On the eve of the 2nd presidential debate, Senator John Kerry is ahead or in statistical tie with President Bush in all 16 “battleground states,” according to a new poll by Zogby Interactive, conducted 9/30 to 10/5 for the Wall St. Journal.
Kerry LV leads (%): AR 0.2; FL 0.4; IA 6.6; MI 9.7; MN 8.3; NV 1.0; NH 6.6; NM 11.4; OH 0.3; OR 10.1; PA 5.4; WA 9.9; and WI 2.5.
Bush LV leads (%): MO 2.2, TN 0.9 and WV 6.1.
According to the analysis of the Zogby Poll published in the Wall St. Journal, “Mr. Kerry holds leads outside the margin of error in 6 states…None of Mr. Bush’s leads are outside the margin.”
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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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.
It is true that cell phones are not called. This probably has a very little impact in polls, since all polls are weighted by age groups.
It is possible that people who only own cell phones MIGHT BE more liberal then other young people, therefore making that age group seem less liberal then it really is. but this is just an assumption, i have’nt seen any evidence to back this up.
Speaking of partisan.
Good old Bill Schneider and “CNN” were nice today admitting the regime were doing JKs work for him this week, what with the various blunders regarding Iraqi Weapons programmes, Rumsfeld’s statements on Saddams’ links with ALQ. and lack of troops on the ground (Bremner)
Lastly they even admitted JFK ahead in the elec. college!!! It was something like 245 (JK) to a meagre 218 (for Pres Awol) with 6 ‘swing’ states going either way. Whooh way to go eh…?
DS-
The problem with weighting is knowing the appropriate weights to use, which has been a topic of some discussion around here.
Phone polls don’t target cell phones. The argument I’ve seen is that there are not that many people who just use cell phones, and that they can weight to get appropriate age relevant numbers. But you’re left with the question of whether those with just cell phones are typical of others of their age group.
Phatcat, Regarding:
“Zogby is NOT a partisan. It makes no sense for a polling company to undermine its credibility by favoring one party over another. Its reputation is based on its ability to deliver accurate results, not serve the Democratic or Republican party.”
As I’ve posted on this board previously, Zogby was well regarded as an independent pollster until 9/11; Since then he has increasingly become sympathetic to the views of his Bush Hating brother Jim, the head of an Arab American organ in the US.
We don’t know the weighting he uses, so for all we know, he can jimmy the numbers the way he wants them to come out. Moreover, I can assure you that he has many more Dems subscribing to his site than Reps, and that makes his numbers suspect – notwithstanding his claim of fudging, er, weighting, the numbers to balance party ID.
Perhaps most important, He claimed in not so subtle languange around the time of the Abu Gharib prison scandal that the race was Kerry’s to lose, thereby undermining his position as an independent pollster in the view of many. Given this previous statement, it’s in HIS interest to tweak his polls in order to support his pre-disposition.
But that’s OK, both sides have partisan pollsters in this fight: The Reps have Strategic Vision & McLaughlin, the Dems have Zogby, ARG & Demo Corp, among others.
Just because you’re a partisan pollster doesn’t mean you’re wrong – It just means people have to look at your polls through the prism of your bias.
Interesting discussion of interactive v. telephone polling. At least the interactive is weighted by party ID, something many of the telephone polls have ignored. I’ve heard that no cell phones are used in the telephone polls. Doesn’t that exclude the large number of us youngsters (& more liberals across the board) who only have a cell phone? Can anyone confirm or deny the assumption?
Thanks.
-DS
This links to Zogby’s summary of their interactive poll method:
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=830
The results are weighted by party ID, so even if there are more Dems (which is probably not true), the weighting scheme compensates for that. Interactive polling is still relatively new and has its own unique set of problems, but telephone polling has problems that in many ways are worse. The only difference between the two right now is that telephone is more established in the public mind and therefore more acceptable, but as a practical matter online polling is as accurate or more accurate than telephone.
Zogby is NOT a partisan. It makes no sense for a polling company to undermine its credibility by favoring one party over another. Its reputation is based on its ability to deliver accurate results, not serve the Democratic or Republican party.
Mara, Regarding:
“Weak employment report this morning, and last month’s numbers were revised down. Bush is getting slapped from all sides. Pity.”
“Weak” and “getting slapped from all sides”, to be sure, are in the eyes of the beholder – No doubt your “sides” represent DNC types and mainstream media outlets already in the bag for Kerry.
That same report also showed that 236,000 jobs were added over the past year, bringing the net job loss since President Bush took office to 500,000, and not the 1,000,000 on Terry McCauliffe crib sheets and blaster Emails.
Thus Presidnet Bush is an a position tonight to respond this way when Kerry’s lips start moving on this issue: SINCE I TOOK OFFICE WE’RE DOWN 500,000 JOBS IN SPITE OF TERRORIST ATTACKS, COPRORATE SCANDALS, THE DOT BOMB MELTDOWN AND 2 WARS. MOREOVER, WE ARE IN A GREAT POSITION TO END BY FIRST TERM IN JAN 2005 AT BREAK EVEN OR WITH A SMALL NET GAIN (HERBERT HOOVER RIP).
I’m open to the argument that interactive polling will do better than telephone polling. Given declining participation rates in telephone surveys, I think there are some real questions there.
But I’ll simultaneously be skeptical of the interactives till I’ve seen more of a track record. I’m inclined to use interactives for trends (thus I’m encouraged by the movement toward Kerry from the last Zogby poll, while being unsure whether the overall numbers are on one side or the other of truth). And when interactive state polls are confirmed by phone polls, I’m encouraged that the answer is pretty close.
When there’s a conflict, I scratch my head and fall back on the “this thing is close. Keep working!” mantra.
So now there’s photos showing that Bush may well have worn a radio receiver to the first debate, in violation of the rules. Incredible.
This is excellent news. If tonight’s debate goes well, and I believe it will, I think Kerry will win by about 10 points.
Hey, I think I’m in there. I got a Zogby Interactive email last week and got polled. And I’m sure if they were trolling for LV’s, I was certainly included.
Then again, I live in Texas which isn’t a battleground state (yet!), but I really think that getting polled by Zogby went more towards getting my vote counted than actually showing up on election day (though I plan to do that too).
KE04 FOREVER!
Weak employment report this morning, and last month’s numbers were revised down. Bush is getting slapped from all sides. Pity.
As someone who desperately wants kerry to win, I still have to question the accuracy of interactive polling. What do you all think? It iseems quite possible to me that people could be seeking out to participate in these polls to influence the news coverage.
Some other encouraging news…SUSA shows Kerry up by 10% in Michigan, the Becker Institute shows Kerry up by 6% in New Hampshire. And Gallup has Colorado dead even, which suggests that we might just be able to pick that one off.
It’s close in Iowa, with SUSA showing Kerry up by 1%.
The bad news is that Gallup has Bush up by 3% in New Mexico and Wisconsin.
If the only changes from 2000 are that Kerry flips Ohio and New Hampshire to his side, but Bush gets New Mexico and Wisconsin, the race ends deadlocked, unless Colorado passes its proportional bill or one of Maine’s districts goes to Bush.
These polls are nice to see. But an 11.4% lead in New Mexico? When most polls show NM to be very close? Seems doubtful that Kerry could be so far ahead.
You got to be kidding me – Then again this is a partisan Dem site, so I guess it’s understandable. Read by bytes: This is an internet poll based exclusively on Zogby subscribers. It should only be used as propaganda in a DNC blaster Email, rather than a microcosm of our electorate.
Insofar as Zogby has become more of a partisan Dem, as opposed to being an independent poll taker, Reps are less likely to subscribe to his site – And thus less likely to participate in hiw “battleground” poll.
Zogby doesn’t publish internals for this poll but I bet his party ID mix is something like: Dems 50%, Reps 25%, Ind 25%. With a party mix like this, how can this poll be credible??