John Kerry leads George Bush 48-47 percent of nation-wide LV’s, with 1 percent for Nader, 1 percent other and 2 percent not sure, according to a Harris Poll conducted 10/21-25.
Note that, since Harris is using their more restrictive definition of likely voters in this poll (registered, absolutely certain to vote, voted in 2000 if old enough to vote), this result actually represents an 9 point swing in Kerry’s favor since their mid-October poll, when Kerry was behind 51-43 among this particular flavor of likely voters.
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 20: What Biden Should Say If He “Steps Aside”
In all the talk about whether Joe Biden should “step aside,” there hasn’t been enough discussion of the rationale he should present if he does so. So I offered one at New York:
The Democratic Party’s semi-public bickering over what to do with Joe Biden needs to come to an end very soon, lest it turn into a horrific party-rending conflict or a de facto surrender to Donald Trump. While he can technically be pushed out of the nomination, it would be nightmarishly difficult to do so given his virtually unopposed performance in the primaries and the lack of precedent for anything like a forced defenestration of a sitting president. It would also express disloyalty to a brave and dedicated leader. But Biden has already lost the united, confident party he needed to make a comeback. He’s trailing in the polls right now. And even more importantly, his own conduct and fitness for office will command center stage for the rest of the general-election campaign, which is precisely what he cannot afford given his poor job-approval ratings and the sour mood of the electorate.
So Joe needs to go of his own accord, and it needs to happen quickly before Republican and Biden-loyalist claims of a “coup” become all too credible. But it’s obviously a humiliating exercise. So if Biden comes to realize the futility of going forward, what can this proud and stubborn man say that will make him something other than an object of derision or pity?
I have a simple answer: He can tell the truth.
The truth is that Biden’s firm commitment to the pursuit of a second term, despite his advanced age and increased frailty, hardened into inflexible determination when Trump made his own decision to launch an initially unlikely comeback. When Biden took office, Trump was a disgraced insurrectionist whose very defenders in his second impeachment trial mostly denounced his conduct, even as they urged acquittal on technical grounds. The 46th president was in a position to serve one distinguished “transitional” term and retire with a wary eye on his fellow retiree festering in anger and self-righteousness in Mar-a-Lago. But as Trump slowly recovered and eventually reemerged as a more dominant figure than ever in a MAGA-fied Republican Party, Biden became convinced that as the only politician ever to defeat Donald Trump, he had the responsibility to do it again and the ability to remind voters why they rejected the 45th president in 2020.
As this strange election year ripened, Biden had a perfectly plausible strategy for victory based on keeping a steady public focus on Trump’s lawless conduct (including actual crimes), his erratic record, and extremist intentions for a perilous second term. The polls were close and Biden wasn’t very popular, but these surveys also showed a durable majority of the electorate that really didn’t want to return Trump to power, particularly as economic conditions improved and the consequences of Trump’s Supreme Court appointments grew more shockingly apparent each day.
Then came the June 27 debate, and suddenly Biden lost the ability to make the election about Trump. He needs to look into a camera and say just that, and conclude that just as the threat posed by Trump motivated him to run for a second term, the threat posed by Trump now requires that he withdraw so that a successor can make the case he can’t make as he’s become the object of endless speculation about his age and cognitive abilities. Biden does not need to resign the presidency, since his grounds for withdrawing his candidacy are about perceptions and politics rather than any underlying incapacity. Biden would be withdrawing as a weakened candidate, not as a failed president.
For this withdrawal to represent a stabilizing event for his administration and his party, it’s critical that Biden not equivocate or complain, and that he show his mastery of the situation by clearly passing the torch to the vice-president he chose four years ago. For all the talk of an “open convention” being exciting (for pundits) and energizing (for the winner), the last thing Democrats need right now is uncertainty. No matter what the polls show and how badly his old friends want him to succeed, it’s the prospect of 100 days of terror every time Biden makes unscripted remarks that is feeding both elite and rank-and-file sentiment that a change at the top of the ticket is necessary. The fear and confusion needs to end now, and Biden effectively made his choice of a successor when he made Kamala Harris his governing partner. The president needs to reassert his agency now, not look like he is abandoning his party and his country to the winds of fate.
A straightforward and honest admission of why Biden 2024 is coming to an end could go a very long way toward enabling Harris and other Democrats to shift the nation’s gaze back to the ranting old man whose acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention showed that he has not mellowed or moderated at all. Of course Biden wants to solidify and extend his legacy over the next four years. But right now, the clear and present danger is that it will be extinguished altogether. He alone can address that threat, not as a candidate, but as a president and a patriot who recognizes his duty.
Kerry will win by three. Now feel free to rest. 🙂
Well, you can try some of the meta-analysis sites out there. These analyze a bunch of polls through various means and try to estimate the outcome. I think you’ll be pleased with the results:
http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/pollcalc.html
http://binomial.csuhayward.edu/WeeklyStatus.html
http://arrowheadengineering.com/
http://www.econ.umn.edu/~amoro/Research/presprobs.html
based on all the polls and interperetations of the polls and increase in voter reg and GOTV efforts and %blacks for kerry and % cuban americans for bush….i was just wondering when someone will tell me how much kerry will win by.
frankly i am exhasuted and would like to take a long rest….any convincing predictions out there?
This is their online poll, and it should be noted that this results differs markedly from the telephone poll released just a few days ago. In the poll, using the same definition of likely voters, Bush was up 8 points. (With the less stringest definition, Bush was up 2 points). This is a big swing of 9 points, but one was telephone, one was internet.
Personally, I have more faith in their Internet polls.
chris matthews said today kerry had the wind at his back and if the wind is still blowing in kerry’s direction tomorow(thursday) kerry will win.
chris matthew called the election for bush exactly 7 days ago.
larry o’donnel spent 10 solid minutes calling swift boat john o’neil a “liar” on scarbourgh 2 nights ago.
not “misleading’ …he called him a “lair” about 37 times , and very loudly. hats off to o’donnel.
You wonder whether Bush in fact has superfluous solid red support, and whether the non-solid-red polls, which really matter, might show 2% more for Kerry.
Isn’t this LV definition the same one that gave Bush a 51-43 edge in the October 14-17 Harris Poll?
Whether this reflects a real shift or just the LV definition working better closer to the election is another question.
I think the BUSH trend is “YOU”RE FIRED.” I was out cnvassing for MOVE ON last night. I called in TEN strong Kerry Edwards voters for ten stops. These were all voters that were not likely to be sampled by any major polling system. There is a vast undercurrent of anger towards the current administration which I think is starting to head towards a crest.
With such a robust sample, you can see that Bush’s MoE puts his ceiling at 49%. His ceiling, mind you.
It does seem that Kerry is breaking a hair ahead in national horse races.
The Harris Poll is the most encouraging poll yet. Last week they ran the poll and offered two different LV scenarios – one with those who will definitely vote AND voted in 2000, and the other with those who will definitely vote but did NOT vote in 2000 (and were old enough). In the second scenario, without 2000 voters, Kerry trailed Bush by 2 (48-46). In the first scenario that excludes new voters Kerry trailed by 8 (51-43). However, in the Harris Poll just released, the LV model resembles the first scenario of the last poll. In other words, Kerry didn’t just increase from -2 to +1, he moved from -8 to +1! That is incredible, if it is true, and shows a huge closing among undecideds for Kerry. I can only imagine what the number is for the second scenario voters now.
Notice how the WSJ headline writers just can’t bring themselves to say that it’s Kerry who is ahead in the latest Harris poll. You have to read to the end of the second paragraph to get that info. Compare that with some recent headlines characterizing Bush’s 1-pt leads as “surges” or “grabs”. I know, it’s no called the SCLM for nothing.
Harris seems to be something that slips under the radar, but from what I’ve heard they’re pretty good.
a trend seems to be emerging, and it’s not good news for George Bush.
Harris is underrepresenting new voters. Their likely voter screen:
“Likely Voters are defined as adults who are registered to vote and say they are “absolutely certain” to vote and, if they were old enough, voted in 2000.”
So if you didn’t vote in 2000 (unregistered, unmotivated) you don’t get counted. I think this poll is even better for Kerry than it seems on the surface.
Is it wishful thinking, or am I detecting a trend here? Kerry is up in the following: Democracy Corps 2 pts, LA Times up 1 pt, Harris 1 pt, and ABC News/Washingto Post 2 pts. Gallop has Bush ahead by only 4 which, if their internals have the same problems, is probably a dead heat. I suspect (and hope) that Kerry is doing his famous closing, and I think the 380 tonnes of missing explosives will galvanize the fence-sitter into KE direction.