I lean toward the second possibility. Ed Kilgore over at NewDonkey gets it about right:

It’s bizarre, to say the least: at precisely the moment when the Bush-Cheney campaign has fully committed itself to an 18-day drive to demonize John Kerry as a Massachusetts Liberal, BC04 and its conservative media echo chamber are suddenly focused on a different L-word: Lesbian, as in the sexual orientation of Mary Cheney.

No, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you hypothesize that BC04 don’t quite know what to do and figure anything that generates a campaign story that isn’t about jobs, health care or Iraq is a net plus. But this kind of campaigning is a sign of weakness (see post below) not strength.
It’s probably also a sign they’re pretty worried the Kerry-is-a-Massachusetts-liberal strategy won’t work. And they should be.

Today’s WP/ABC tracking poll has Kerry up by 1 among RVs. (I explain my preference for the WP RV data in this post.). But the LV data are not much different: a dead heat.
Both results differ substantially from today’s Zogby tracking poll result, which had Bush up by 4 and occasioned considerable rending of garments in Democratic circles.
What accounts for the differences between the two polls? Certainly not their party ID distributions. Zogby, as is well-known, weights to the 2000 exit poll distribution, which was +4D. WP, on the other hand, does not (though, as I explain in the post cited above, they may use some modified party-weighting scheme, at least on their LV data). Based on data WP releases on vote by partisanship, their LV sample appears to be currently running at about +2-3D on party ID (no comparable data are released on RVs, so no comparable estimate can be made). That means the differences between the two polls, controlling for party ID distribution, are actually slightly larger than they seem on the surface–if you weighted the WP LV sample to the Zogby/exit poll distribution, Kerry would actually be ahead of Bush by a point, rather than tied.
So: what does account for the differences between the two polls? Try this one on for size: Zogby has Kerry winning Democrats by just 64 points (79-15), while Bush wins Republicans by 83 points (89-6)–almost a 20 point gap in partisan support margins. In contrast, in the WP LV poll, Kerry wins Democrats by 73 points (85-12), while Bush wins Republicans by 80 points (90-10)–a much more modest 7 point gap in partisan support margins (commensurate, incidentally, with the gap we saw in 2000 between partisan support margins).
In short, the primary driver of the differences between the WP and Zogby tracking polls is the unusually low margin for Kerry among Democrats in the Zogby poll. I personally don’t find that margin particularly plausible, since it is contradicted by the WP poll, by numerous other recent polls and by the 2000 exit poll results.
Lesson: don’t let any particular tracking poll result get you down and, to the extent possible, look at a poll’s internals to see what might be driving the result.
A note on Nader: A front-page story in The New York Times today (and see also Ryan Lizza’s piece in the new TNR) on the threat Nader poses to Kerry no doubt caused some additional garment-rending in Democratic circles. And there’s no doubt he does pose some kind of threat–pretty much by definition even a very small Nader vote could tip a state if that state were close enough.
But the smaller Nader’s vote, the less likely such an outcome will occur. And Nader’s vote is likely to be quite small indeed. Currently, he is running at 1-2 percent in the national polls and most relevant state polls as well. Looking at analagous polls from the analagous time period in the 2000 campaign, he was running at 3-5 percent of the vote.
Take Zogby’s tracking poll as an example. In 2000, Nader was polling 5 percent at this time in October. This year in the same poll, he’s getting 1 percent support, very close to the support being received by Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate.
So: worry some about Nader. But not too much. I’d worry much, much more about turnout and mobilization.

I know I keep flogging these debate data….but I just can’t help myself! Democracy Corps did pre-post debate surveys for each debate, which have all been released, including the last one. But, as Paul Waldman points out at the Gadflyer:

…instead of looking at the differences from Wednesday to Thursday, we should look at how far the candidates have come since before all the debates began.

The DCorps data allow us to do that–compare pre-first debate to post-third debate–and here’s what the data say, according to Waldman:

…people’s opinions of Bush after the debates are just where they were before the debates, while Kerry has improved dramatically on every measure. Bush’s average improvement was one-half of a percentage point, while Kerry’s average improvement was 9.5%.

Waldman goes on to give the changes for Kerry on each individual candidate attribute, as well as the changes for Bush. It’s quite eye-opening. See the link above for all the data. (Note: I am told that DCorps will be releasing charts summarizing these changes and others over the course of the debates very shortly. I will provide a link to these charts when they are posted.)

Right now, you’re probably asking yourself: what do the latest tracking polls have to say about the presidential race? Well then, you really must toddle over to Bob Poulsen’s most excellent 2.004k.com site, where he has a special little page that displays the latest tracking polls side-by-side and updates that page every time new results come out. And as with all the rest of the pages on his site (he has great coverage of all other national polls, as well as data from all the states) topline results are presented crisply, LVs and Rvs distinguished and correct links to the full data provided.
Drop on by. You’ll be glad you did.

….to look at all the basic results from all the debates all in one place. Kos thoughtfully organized these data and posted them over at the Daily Kos but I couldn’t resist putting them up here as well. So, feast your eyes on these numbers–as the data show, Kerry won every single poll after all three debates and consistently did even better among uncommitted voters and independents. That’s got to put a spring in your step as we move into the last weeks of the campaign.

Debate 1
ABC: Kerry won 45-36
CBS, uncommitted voters: Kerry won 44-26.
CNN/USA Today Gallup: Kerry won 53-37, 60-29 among independents
Democracy Corps: Kerry won 45-32
ARG: Kerry won 51-41
Debate 2
ABC: Kerry wins 44-41
CNN/USA Today Gallup: Kerry wins 47-45
Democracy Corps: Kerry wins 45-37
Debate 3
CBS, undecideds: Kerry wins 39-25. Before the debate, 29% said Kerry had clear positions on the issues, after, that number doubled to 60%.
ABC: Kerry won 42%-41% in a poll that surveyed 8% more Republicans than Democrats. Independent voters thought Kerry won, 42-35
CNN/USA Today Gallup: Kerry wins 52-39. Among independents, Kerry won 54-34.
Democracy Corps: Kerry wins 41-36.

Great stuff, huh? On to November.

According to a CBS News poll of uncommitted voters:

Kerry [was] the winner by 39-25 percent over Mr. Bush, with 36 percent calling it a tie. Sixty percent said Kerry has clear positions on the issues. Before the third debate, only 29 percent of the same voters said Kerry had clear positions.

I particularly like that movement on clear positions on the issues.
Kerry also emerged a strong winner in the Gallup/CNN post-debate flash poll:

According to the Gallup organization as reported by CNN, Kerry won the debate with 52% while only 39% felt that George Bush had the better night.
For comparison, the first debate’s flash results left Kerry the winner 53% to 37% and the second debate was closer with Kerry leading 47% to 45%.

Note how close tonight’s results are to the results from the first debate, which is now viewed as a Kerry blow-out. Very interesting.
Finally, in an ABC News poll of “likely voters”:

42 percent picked Kerry as the winner, 41 percent chose Bush and 14 percent said they tied.
The network said 38 percent of its respondents were Republican, 30 percent were Democrats and 28 percent were independent.

Hmmm. Wonder how that poll would have turned out without an 8 point Republican party ID advantage. Ah, those pesky ABC likely voters.
Expect Kerry’s winning margin to grow as this debate settles in the public mind.

Not in the silly LV data they like to feature, but where it counts: in their RV data. Kerry now leads by 2 points among RVs in the WP/ABC tracking poll, compared to 2 points down 3 days ago and 6 points down a week ago.
Alan Abramowitz adds this note on the WP tracking poll’s idiosyncracies:

The latest ABC/Washington Post tracking poll is showing a 3 point lead for George Bush among likely voters but a 2 point lead for John Kerry among registered voters. This means that the ABC/WP poll is projecting that 85.1 percent of registered Bush supporters will vote but only 76.6 percent of registered Kerry supporters will vote–an 8.5 point Republican turnout advantage. Over the past several days, there has been a consistent LV/RV discrepancy of about this magnitude in the poll. However, data from the past three presidential elections shows that the Republican turnout advantage has never been larger than 3 points. In 1992, the highest turnout election of the three, the difference was only 1 point. In a high turnout election, and 2004 will certainly be a very high turnout election, is is simply not plausible that there will be such a large difference between the prefernces of registered and likely voters. During the final week of the 2000 campaign, George Bush held a consistent lead of 3-4 points among likely voters in the ABC/WP tracking poll. I wonder what the poll’s results were among all registered voters? I suspect that they were much closer to the actual results of the election and I suspect that that will also be the case this year.

1. Tomorrow’s debate is about domestic issues. Here is Kerry versus Bush in ten domestic issue areas polled by Gallup (issue data summary provided by Alan Abramowitz):
The environment: Kerry 60 percent, Bush 31 percent
Stem cell research: Kerry 53 percent, Bush 33 percent
Health care: Kerry 56 percent, Bush 37 percent
Medicare: Kerry 53 percent, Bush 38 percent
Federal budget deficit: Kerry 53 percent, Bush 40 percent
Social Security: Kerry 50 percent, Bush 41 percent
Education: Kerry 50 percent, Bush 43 percent
The economy: Kerry 49 percent, Bush 45 percent
Abortion: Kerry 46 percent, Bush 42 percent
Taxes: Kerry 44 percent, Bush 51 percent
Average of all ten domestic issues: Kerry 51.4 percent, Bush 40.1 percent
2. While the race is tied 48-48 in Gallup’s 2-way RV matchup, Kerry leads by 5 in the battleground states and by 8 among independents.
3. The gender gap is alive and well. Kerry leads Bush by 9 among women and trails Bush by 9 among men.
4. While the party ID distribution seems more reasonable in this poll than in many recent Gallup polls, if you re-weight their 2-way RV data by the 2000 exit poll distribution, you actually get a 4 point Kerry lead, not the dead heat they report.
That result would tend to imply that the party ID distribution is about even in this poll. However, Steve Soto got Gallup to give him the party ID distribution for the RV sample in this poll and they reported a 36R/34D/29I distribution. Interesting. That distribution, based on their reported internals for the RV sample, would actually give Bush a 1 point lead among RVs, not the dead heat they report.
I can’t explain this discrepancy, I merely report it. It’s also a bit puzzling that Gallup reports a 4 point Republican party ID advantage in their LV sample–i.e., 2 points more Republican than they say their RV sample is–but that same LV sample yields a 2 point Kerry lead. In other words, the LV sample is 2 points more Republican yet produces a result that’s 2 points more Democratic.
Go figure.

Alan Abramowitz writes:

John Kerry leads George Bush by 49 to 48 percent among likely voters in a new Gallup poll. Other key findings: Bush’s approval rating has fallen to 47 percent, another sign of danger for the incumbent, and respondents in the poll chose Kerry as the winner of the second debate by a decisive margin of 45 to 30 percent.

Now that we’re doing a lot more posting on DR, perhaps it’s time to clarify who posts what on the blog.
1. The posts I do personally all say “Posted by Ruy Teixeira” at the bottom.
2. Most other posts, especially the short notices on new polling data, are done by EDM staff and say “Posted by EDM Staff” at the bottom.
3. There are occasional guest posts by commentators like John Belisarius that are clearly indicated as such at the top of the post, though they may have “Posted by EDM Staff” at the bottom.
4. There are friends of the blog, like Alan Abramowitz, who send us material which is included in posts by myself or by EDM staff. These contributions are clearly attributed to their authors and typically set off as indented material in the post.
Hope that clears up any confusion. Now, back to the (analysis) salt mines.