By Alan Abramowitz
I just received the following message from a colleague at another university who is totally trustworthy:
“I have friend who is a co-chair of the Bush Cheney campaign. Rove believes that Bush needs to have a 4 point lead going into the last weekend to win given the undecideds that will break againt the president.”

By Alan Abramowitz
Fasten your seat belts and make sure that your tray tables and seat backs are in their fully upright and locked positions. The 2004 presidential campaign is coming in for a landing and it’s going to be a bumpy ride. You’re going to see some strange poll results over the next two weeks and the most important thing to keep in mind is that if a poll’s results don’t make sense–if they seem to be out of line with most other polls or if they show a big difference between registered voters and likely voters–don’t believe them.
We’ve already pointed out that during the final week of the 2000 campaign, 39 out of 43 national polls showed George Bush leading Al Gore. A look back at the state polls released during the final two weeks of the 2000 presidential campaign shows that while most of the polls were reasonably accurate, there were some that were way off the mark.
The final Zogby tracking poll in California showed Al Gore with a razor thin 1 point lead over George Bush. Maybe that’s why Bush ran off to California during the final few days of the campaign. Gore won the state by 12 points.
In Delaware, which was considered a swing state by many analysts in 2000, a late Mason-Dixon Poll had Bush leading Gore by 4 points. Gore won the state by 13.
In Illinois, which many pundits did not consider safe for Al Gore either, a Mason-Dixon Poll had Gore with only a 3 point lead and a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll had Bush with a 3 point lead. Gore carried the state by 12.
In Michigan almost all of the polls showed Al Gore with the lead. But a Market Research Group Poll completed on October 26 had Bush ahead by 6. Gore carried the state by 5. Market Research Group was a Republican polling organization and this year we’re seeing a lot more of those Republican polls, a lot of them from an outfit called Strategic Vision. Take their results with a very large grain of salt.
In New Jersey, three late polls, two by Quinnipiac University and one by the Gannett newspapers, all showed Al Gore with a fairly narrow lead–ranging from 5 to 8 points. Gore carried the state by 16. This year we’re again seeing some state polls showing that New Jersey is close. We’ll see if they’re any more accurate this time than they were four years ago.
In Ohio, two late polls, one by the University of Cincinnatti and one by The Columbus Dispatch, gave George Bush a 10 point lead over Al Gore. On Election Day, Bush’s margin was only 4 points.
Finally, in Wisconsin, a swing state in 2000 and in 2004, the final Zogby tracking poll and a late poll by Market Shares had Bush ahead of Gore by 6 and 5 points respectively. Al Gore carried the state by less than 1 percentage point.

John Kerry leads George Bush 48-44 percent of Florida RV’s, according to a new Florida Insider Poll conducted 10/12-14 — a 7 point gain over the previous Insider poll taken just before the 3rd presidential debate.

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.

John Kerry leads George Bush 50-45 percent of nation-wide RV’s according to a poll conducted 10/3-13 by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University.

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.