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.”
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.
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??