The political theory of cutting taxes is that people will feel their taxes have gone down and feel generally better off. Therefore, if you cut taxes they will vote for you.
The devil may be in the details on that one. In a just-released Ipsos-AP poll, 49 percent say their overall tax burden–federal, state and local–has gone up in the last three years. That’s almost four times the number (13 percent) who say their tax burden has gone down over that time period.
And here’s an even more devestating datum: in a new ICR-Money magazine poll, 60 percent say they personally did not benefit from the 2003 tax cut, compared to just 34 percent who say they did.
Much of this has to with the trivial nature of the tax benefits doled out to the middle class, compared to those doled out to the affluent. For the average voter, these benefits were no doubt easy to miss. But I wonder if some of the jaundiced reaction at this point isn’t attributable to finding out, as tax day approached, that you owed Uncle Sam substantially more than you thought you did. That happened to me and a number of other people I know and it reflects the way the withholding schedules were changed last year, in association with the tax cuts, to pump more money into people’s pockets. That worked in the short run but now it means many people have to write some serious checks they weren’t planning on and they’re probably not happy about it.
The ICR-Money survey also shows that the public would prefer reducing the federal deficit to the 2003 tax cut by 50-42. Still more impressive, the public would prefer a job creation program to the 2003 tax cut by a stunning 76-21. That includes 89 percent of Democrats, 83 percent of independents and even 54 percent of Republicans who say they would prefer a job creation program to the tax cut.
These findings lead me to one of my favorite hobby horses: the potential role of government spending in job creation. The public is clearly much more enthusiastic about using government resources–such as might be used to support tax cuts–for job creation than they are about using such resouces for deficit reduction. Yet the Kerry team has been at pains to emphasize their commitment to deficit reduction and has been backing off their commitment to spending programs that might generate jobs.
This seems strange, given these and other poll results, many of which I have reviewed in DR. I understand that Rubinomics, as the economic program associated with the Clinton years has appeal (especially and non-trivially to those Kerry advisors who were intimately involved with it). And I understand that advocating spending on job creation means the Republicans will try to pin the tax-and-spend label on Kerry.
But surely there’s a middle ground here. As Louis Uchitelle argued in an important article in Sunday’s New York Times, it is time to revisit the idea that government should play a more substantial role in job creation.
Uchitelle concludes his article with the following three paragraphs:
Free markets work best when government stays in the background, encouraging the private sector through various supportive measures. President Bill Clinton made that claim and took credit for the full employment that finally reappeared in the late 1990’s. President Bush has staked out roughly the same ground, although the job creation he promises as a result of his tax cuts has not occurred. It will, Mr. Kerry says, if we cancel the most egregious Bush tax cuts and substitute incentives that encourage corporate hiring.
The public wonders. Years of layoffs, wage stagnation, outsourcing and now offshore contracting have made people skeptical. [Barney] Frank plays to that skepticism. So do a few others, the most important being Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Democratic leader who in recent speeches appears to be trying to push his party back toward New Deal policies. The government job creation in his proposals would be coupled with much-needed public spending.
School and highway construction are examples. “Every billion dollars invested in highway construction produces 47,500 jobs,” the senator said in a speech. He added: “We must create new and meaningful jobs for all Americans. And we must do this by recognizing once again that government – an enlightened government – has an extraordinary responsibility to assist in this task.”
Food for thought.

Here’s a recent statement on Bush’s approval ratings and what they portend for his re-election from the conservative website RealClearPolitics.com.
As a crude measuring stick for the state of the presidential race, an over 50% job approval for the President should translate into a Bush victory. A 45% – 49% job approval will mean a close race, but I would give President Bush the advantage. A 40% – 44% job approval for the President would translate into a dead heat race, and below 40% and you would have to give the advantage to Kerry.
Oh really? And just what do they base this cheerful assessment on? They don’t say, but it is worth noting that this represents a considerable lowering of the bar for Bush (just keep it at 45 or above and even 40-44 isn’t so bad!) compared to earlier Republican claims about his approval ratings.
Here’s what I had to say back in February of 2003 when Matthew Dowd, pollster for the RNC, was touting 50 percent or above as the magic number for Bush:
….we don’t really know an incumbent president at 50 percent can’t be defeated. After all, we only have approval rating data from 1948 onwards, so there are a very limited amount of cases to consider — to be precise, eight, if we restrict our attention to incumbent presidents. Of these eight, none had a rating of exactly 50 percent in July of their election year and the closest was 53 percent. So maybe 53 percent is the magic level (if there is one) — Dowd’s use of the 50 percent level is purely arbitrary and slants the rather thin historical record in Bush’s favor. In addition, the president who had this 53 percent rating and was, in fact, reelected (Ronald Reagan in 1984) also had the benefit of a strong economy. So what happens at 53 percent and a weak economy, like Bush currently has? We don’t know. And we certainly don’t know about 50 percent and a weak economy, the scenario Dowd seems to be trying to cover with his confident historical assertions. Indeed, the closer one looks at Dowd’s “50 percent and you’re golden” rule for re-electing incumbent presidents, the shakier it looks. What he’s trying to pass off as an iron law of history is, in fact, a tendentious reading of a very modest amount of real data.
What goes for Dowd goes double for RealClearPolitics and their attempt to make 45 percent the magic number.
Especially since there’s really only one case that falls into the 45-49 percent approval category–where Bush is now–and that’s Gerald Ford. And he lost. And there’s really never been a 40-44 case (Carter and Bush I were sub-40 guys) so how can they say that such a rating translates into a “dead heat”? It seems more reasonable, if you’re going to play this game, to say that a rating in between Ford’s and Carter/Bush I’s translates into a likely loss, not a tossup.
These guys are just whistling past the graveyard. Their attempts to make up fake historical laws are just designed to (1) paper over the fact that his current approval ratings are more bad than good news for an incumbent president; and (2) give them bogus talking points so that, if Bush falls any farther, they can still claim he’s bound to win.
Don’t be taken in. They’re worried. Real worried.

There’s been considerable confusion about which trial heat results to pay the most attention to at this point in the race. Here’s my take, which should help clarify why I choose to focus on certain results over others in this blog.
One issue is likely voters (LVs) vs. registered voters (RVs). At this point, most polls are surveying only RVs and I believe that’s appropriate and, in fact, preferable. It is way too early to put much faith in likely voter screens/models as representing very accurately the voters who will actually show up on election day. There is reasonable evidence that careful likely voter methodologies work well close to the election and do fairly accurately capture that pool of voters. But there is no such evidence for LV samples drawn this far out.
Indeed, my understanding is that Gallup does LVs this early not so much because they believe they are capturing election day voters this early, but more so that they can avoid having to explain sudden shifts in the horse race question as LV data replaces RV data in the fall (the traditional time to switch from RVs to LVs). There have apparently been some problems with this in the past, so reporting both from the very beginning of the campaign eliminates any potential embarrassments along these lines. But that doesn’t mean the LV data is any better at this point in time–it merely means they’re providing it.
In fact, since the sample size for LVs is smaller and since the composition of the LV sample will shift depending on how political developments are affecting interest and intensity levels among different groups of voters, additional volatility is built into the LV samples that is not there with the RV samples.
And then there are the comparability problems. LV samples are difficult even to compare to one another, since methodologies differ, and clearly can’t be compared very well to RV samples, which are the bulk of polls at this time. That’s another strike against paying much attention to LV results this early.
Another issue is how much attention to pay to the Rasmussen tracking poll. My view is that this poll is worth looking at but with caution. It is the only tracking poll out there at this point and therefore on any given day it may have the “freshest” results. But it is only one poll and there is no other tracking poll to check it against. Moreover, it is a poll of LVs, which, as outlined above, should be viewed with some skepticism at this point. Therefore, I am inclined to pay more attention to standard national polls of RVs and the trends these polls imply than to this one tracking poll.
Let me sum up my current approach, both as outlined above and in previous posts (for example, on the Bush-Kerry vs. Bush-Kerry-Nader question) with the following:
Ruy’s Rules
1. Pay more attention to Bush-Kerry results than to Bush-Kerry-Nader results.
2. Pay more attention to RV results than LV results.
3. Pay more attention to recent national polls of RVs and the trends they imply than to the Rasmussen poll.
These rules don’t mean ignore the rest of the data. On the contrary, immerse yourself in as much of it as you can stand. But these rules provide a way to sift through the available data to get the best sense of how the contest between Bush and Kerry is developing.

I noted on April 2 that Kerry was ahead of Bush by 5 points in a Bush-Kerry trial heat among RVs. The two latest Bush-Kerry trial heats among RVs show Kerry ahead by even wider margins.
The latest ARG poll, conducted April 6-9, has Kerry ahead by 6 (50-44). And the latest Newsweek poll, conducted April 8-9, has Kerry ahead by 7 (50-43).
The Newsweek poll also finds that, by 60-23, the public thinks the Bush administration “underestimated the terrorist threat and focused too much on other security issues like missile defense and Iraq” rather than “took the threat of global terrorism as seriously as it should have prior to September 11th”.
And note that this poll was taken before the release of the August 6, 2001 briefing memo to Bush, which just hit the papers today. It will be interesting to see how much the release of this memo further erodes Bush’s credibility and political standing.

CBS News reinterviewed some of the respondents from their March 30-April 1 poll on the night of April 8, the day Rice testified. Here are some of the changes they found.
Bush’s handling of the situation with Iraq: essentially unchanged (45 percent approval/50 percent disapproval to 46/50).
Bush’s handling of the campaign against terrorism: down slightly, from 58/36 to 56/38.
Whether the result of the war with Iraq was worth the associated costs: down from 39 yes/53 no to 34 yes/57 no (27/65 among independents).
Whether the US did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq or should have stayed out: down from 55 right thing/39 stayed out to 50/46.
Whether the policies of the Bush adminstration have made the US safer from terrorism: very slightly up, from 50 yes to 51.
Whether the Bush administration was paying enough attention to terrorism prior to 9/11: up from 18 paying enough attention/71 not enough attention, but only to 25/68.
Good thing Bush is taking a rest. It looks like he’s going to need it.

Seems unlikely to me based on the parts of that testimony I caught on TV. And especially unlikely given the strongly negative public opinion trends that are buffeting the Bush administration.
Consider the following. After a month where Bush spent heavily on campaign ads attacking John Kerry and where the economy finally turned in a good performance on creating jobs, the president’s political position has gotten substantially worse, not better.
The lastest Pew Research Center poll, conducted April 1-4 and overlapping with last Friday’s strong jobs report, has his overall job approval rating at 43 percent–the worst rating in any public poll of his presidency–with 47 percent disapproval. The same poll has his approval rating on the economy at just 39 percent with 53 percent disapproval.
In the latest CBS News poll, his economic approval rating is even worse: 37 percent approval/56 percent disapproval (30/59, almost 2:1 disapproval, among independents). And that’s at the end of a strong economic month for the administration.
But it is on Iraq, foreign policy and, above all, the war on terror that Bush’s position has deteriorated most significantly. That I believe was the most important political development of month of March, not the much-ballyhooed Bush campaign ads and the (completely predictable) diminution in Kerry’s lead over Bush in polling trial heats.
In the Pew poll, Bush’s approval rating on Iraq is down to 40 percent with 53 percent disapproval. That’s a 35 point swing from the Iraq rating Bush received in January in the same poll (59/37).
On foreign policy, the CBS News poll has Bush at 42 percent approval/49 percent disapproval and a dismal 36/52 among independents.
But it’s on his handling of the war on terror that Bush has taken the most significant blows to his political standing. That area has been Bush’s political fortress ever since 9/11.
No longer–that fortress is crumbling. In the CBS News poll, he’s down to 58 percent approval in this area. And in two recent polls–the Pew poll and the Annenberg Election Survey–his approval rating on handling the war against terrorism is down to a distinctly underwhelming 53 percent.
Moreover, by almost 3:1 (67-23) in the CBS News poll, the public now says the Bush administration could have done more to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks (more than 3:1–68/20–among independents).
As revelations about the Bush administration’s inept handling of the terrorist threat, both before and after 9/11, continue to emerge, the public’s view of Bush’s performance in this area seems likely to deteriorate even further.
As will definitely be the case with his handling of Iraq, given the increasing violence and instability there (note that the polls discussed here were taken prior to this week’s intense street battles in multiple cities). In the CBS News poll, those saying the result of the Iraq war was not worth the loss of US life and other costs now outnumber those saying it was by 54-37 (59-32 among independents, almost 2:1). Only 36 percent believe the war has made the US safer from terrorism; only 34 percent believe the Iraq war is a major part of the war against terrorism; and just 15 percent believe the Bush administration has clearly explained how long US troops will be in Iraq.
In addition, the Pew poll shows that, by 57-32, people don’t think Bush has a clear plan to bring the Iraq situation to a successful conclusion. And the public is now close to evenly split on whether to keep troops in Iraq until a stable government is etablished (50 percent) or simply bring troops home as soon as possible (44 percent). That’s down from strong 63-32 support for keeping troops there in January.
Yup, it’ll take more than Condi Rice’s stonewalling to turn these numbers around. And clearly Bush’s deteriorating political position has already benefitted Kerry, who leads now leads by 5 points (16 points among independents ) in CBS News’ presidential trial heat.
But I am nevertheless struck by how timid Kerry’s approach seems given Bush’s increasing vulnerabilities. His economic plan is quite cautious, focusing around fiddling with tax incentives and deficit reduction (see his speech yesterday at Georgetown University). Is this really a convincing answer to the challenges posed by outsourcing and the end of the 90’s bubble economy? I don’t think so–and read these important pieces by Paul Glastris and Brad DeLong/Stephen Cohen to get a sense of how seriously vision-challenged Kerry’s current economic policies are.
As for Iraq and the war on terror, Kerry seems content to let the evolving situation drag Bush down without any help from him. That may have been a wise decision over the short run but it is not sustainable over the long run. Here’s an excerpt from today’s Adam Nagourney/Carl Hulse story in The New York Times:
Mr. Kerry described the president’s Iraq policy as “one of the greatest failures of diplomacy and failures of judgment that I have seen in all the time that I’ve been in public life.”
Still, even as he attacked Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry was notably vague in saying how he would handle the matter as president. His advisers said he had no plans to offer a policy speech about a war that aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry alike said they now expected to provide a bloody backdrop for the campaign for months.
“Right now, what I would do differently is, I mean, look, I’m not the president, and I didn’t create this mess so I don’t want to acknowledge a mistake that I haven’t made,” Mr. Kerry said on Wednesday on CNN.
Seems pretty damn weak to me. I think he’s going to have to do a lot better than this if he is to reap full political advantage from Bush’s increasing vulnerability on Iraq and national security.

Oh those pesky seniors! They never do what they’re supposed to do, at least if you’re a GOP political strategist. Check out this new analysis from Gallup of attitudes toward the Medicare prescription drugs law.
Here’s the most amazing thing: seniors now say they oppose, not favor, the part of the law that should be most popular among them: the new prescription drug benefit. In early December, they narrowly favored it, 46-39. But now, four months later, they say they oppose it, 48-36.
The Gallup analysis also finds that only 26 percent of seniors believe the new law will actually help seniors with their prescription drugs situation, rather than hurt it or have no effect. And only 14 percent of seniors think the bill will help make the Medicare system more financially secure.
Read ’em and weep, Karl.
Note: With this post, I’m off on Spring Break ’til Wednesday. Back with analysis of the latest polling data and other thoughts then.

The latest CBS News poll, conducted March 30-April 1, has Kerry beating Bush by 5 points among RVs. That’s consistent with the Los Angeles Times data I discussed yesterday.
There’s also new and strong evidence of Bush’s eroding credibility and the public’s declining confidence in his handling of the war on terror. Check it out.

The newly-released Los Angeles Times (LAT) poll confirms the difficulties Bush is now facing in his re-election effort, including eroding support for his handling of the war on terror. The poll also presents a less-cheerful view of how Bush is faring against Kerry in election trial heats, when compared to the much-publicized Gallup poll I discussed on Tuesday.
Let’s start with the horse race data. The LAT poll, which has a larger sample size (N=1,616) than the Gallup poll and was conducted more recently (March 27-30), finds Kerry ahead 49-46 among RVs. The Gallup poll, in contrast, had exactly the reverse result–Bush ahead of Kerry by 49-46.
According to the LAT data, Kerry’s lead is larger among independents (49-44) than among all RVs and much larger among moderates (58-33). In addition, Kerry pulls two-thirds of the youth (18-29) vote and leads among seniors by 9 points (51-42).
It’s also interesting to note that Kerry is pulling 43 percent among white men, only behind Bush by about 10 points. In 2000, Gore only drew 36 percent among this group and lost to Bush by 24 points.
The LAT poll includes a Bush-Kerry-Nader trial heat, as well as the Bush-Kerry matchup just discussed. The intruiging result here is that inclusion of Nader does not change the balance between Kerry and Bush; the margin remains exactly the same. Note that this result–Nader not changing the Bush-Kerry margin–was also observed in the Gallup poll mentioned above.
The poll finds the public saying by a wide margin that the country is off on the wrong track (55 percent), rather than going in the right direction (36 percent). And among independents, it’s a stunningly negative verdict: 61 percent wrong track/29 percent right direction.
In terms of approval ratings, Bush’s overall rating is 51 percent and his rating on Iraq is 49 percent, both 2 points lower than the ratings reported by Gallup on Tuesday. And his rating on “handling the war on terrorism”, consistent with other recent polls, is now down to 56 percent, an underwhelming figure for what has been, by far, his strongest area (and it’s only 52 percent among moderates).
Also consistent with other recent polls, the public agrees, by 52-40, that Bush failed to take the threat of terrorism seriously enough before the September 11 Al Qaeda attacks (57-38 among independents and 54-38 among moderates). The public agrees even more strongly that Bush was more focused on attacking Iraq than dealing with terrorism as his top priority (64-32 (2:1!) among independents and 61-33 among moderates).
The LAT poll gives Kerry a better favorability rating than the recent Gallup poll. His favorable rating is 48 percent with just 29 percent unfavorable, for a +19 differential. That differential rises to +24 among independents and +36 among moderates (only 19 percent of this group views Kerry unfavorably).
Bush, in contrast, is viewed favorably by 50 percent, just barely more than the 47 percent who view him unfavorably, for a narrow +3 differential. And among independents (-8 differential) and moderates (-10), he is viewed more unfavorably than favorably.
In the poll, more people believe the statement “he cares about people like me” applies to Kerry than to Bush (43-33). And independents (51-22) and moderates (53-25) prefer Kerry particularly strongly.
The poll finds the public narrowly preferring Bush to Kerry on “he will be a strong leader for the country” (46-38) and on “he has the honesty and integrity to be president (41-36), but, in each case, independents and moderates believe these statements apply more to Kerry than Bush.
And here’s an interesting one. What’s the quintessential GOP attack on Kerry these days?: “he flip-flops on the issues”, of course. Well, in this poll, nearly as many say this statement applies to Bush (35 percent) as say it applies to Kerry (38 percent). And moderates actually say, by 38-28, that the statement applies more to Bush than Kerry!
Perhaps that line of criticism will not turn out to be quite the slam-dunk the GOP has assumed.
Tomorrow: The LAT poll on the economy and related issues.

Gallup has released new data that have led to quite a bit of media comment and need to be sorted out. What are the key findings of this poll and how plausible are they?
The first thing to note is that the poll confirms the erosion of support for Bush’s handling of the war on terror. Since that support is essentially the foundation on which Bush is building his re-election effort, bad news in this department, in my view, more than cancels out any good news for Bush on other fronts (which I’ll get to in a moment).
According to the poll, Bush’s approval rating on handling terrorism is now down to 58 percent, by far the lowest he’s ever registered, and his disapproval is up to 39 percent, by far the highest he’s ever registered. That’s very significant and I find it hard to believe that the importance of this trend could be overlooked…..but it was, by USA Today, whose story on the poll by Richard Bendetto was headlined “Majority Supports Bush on Terrorism“. Apparently the fact that his job rating on terrorism is still over 50 percent is deemed more important than the fact that it’s falling rapidly.
The poll also finds the public: (1) endorsing the idea that Bush misled the public for political reasons (53-44); (2) saying that the Bush administration, based on pre-9/11 information, did not do all that could be done to prevent the 9/11 attacks (54-42); and (3) believing that the Bush administration is covering up something about its intelligence information concerning possible terrrorist attacks before 9/11 (53-41).
In addition, the public is now split on: (1) whether to believe Richard Clarke (44 percent) or the Bush administration (46 percent) on whether the administration paid enough attention to the terrorist threat before 9/11; (2) whether Bush after 9/11 paid enough attention to the al Qaeda threat (49 percent) or did not pay enough attention because he was too concerned about Saddam Hussein (46 percent); and (3) whether the Iraq war is part of the war on terrorism (50 percent) or an entirely separate military action (48 percent). (Note that the latter question returned a healthy 57-41 majority in favor of the Iraq war being a part of the war on terrorism when it was first asked last August.)
I’d say some very serious doubts have been raised here–doubts that threaten Bush’s case for re-election in the most fundamental way.
The poll also finds Bush’s ratings tanking in two domestic areas. On the economy, his rating is now 42 percent approval/55 percent disapproval–tied with last October for his lowest approval and highest disapproval ever.
On Medicare, his rating is now only 35 percent approval/55 percent disapproval. That’s down 9 points on approval and up 14 points on disapproval just since the beginning of February.
In light of all this, it’s amazing that the Gallup poll pegs Bush’s approval rating at 53 percent, up 3 points since their last survey on March 8-11. Bush hasn’t broken 50 in the other 4 national polls taken since mid-March, averaging 48 percent approval, 5 points below the Gallup rating.
It’s also amazing that Gallup has Bush’s approval rating on Iraq going up to 51 approval/47 percent disapproval, so that Bush is a net +4 on the issue. Newsweek, in contrast, who polled on two days (March 25-26) partially overlapping the Gallup poll (March 26-28), had Bush’s approval rating on Iraq going down to 44 percent approval/50 percent disapproval for a net -6 on the measure.
Quite a contrast. Which brings us to Gallup’s horse race result. Gallup has Bush ahead of Kerry of by 4 points (51-47) among LVs and by 3 points among RVs (49-46). This has occasioned considerable comment because this apparent Bush lead was measured at the end of a very tough week for the administration, with all the damage to Bush’s image outlined above.
Several points are worth noting here. First, there are three national polls proximate in time to the Gallup poll, all of which show a slight Kerry lead: Rasumssen (1 point among LVs on 3/29, rising to 2 points today); Pew (1 point among RVs); and Newsweek (1 points among RVs).
Second, it is possible that the Gallup results are a bit of a pro-Bush outlier because of the composition of the sample. The Gallup report on this poll points out:
There has been no change over the past several weeks in the percentage of Republicans and Democrats supporting their own party’s candidate, or in the candidate preferences of independents. Rather, the increase in support for Bush over the past few weeks comes mostly from an increase in the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans, and a comparable decline in self-identified Democrats. This could be the natural result of a shift in the political environment now that the Democratic primary season has concluded.
Maybe. Or it could be that, for whatever reason, Gallup happened to draw a disproportionately Republican sample. That would explain some of the anomalies in the poll that have just been outlined. It would also imply, of course, that the bad news for Bush is a bit worse than it appears in this poll.
Another possibility–not mutually exclusive with the pro-Republican sample possibility–is that Gallup caught a movement toward Bush on the heels of the administration’s take-no-prisoners attack on Clarke, including Frist’s “you sir are a scoundrel who may have committed perjury so let’s declassify your earlier testimony”, which Clarke initially did not comment on. Media coverage of Clarke’s pushback on the administration (“sure, let’s declassify everything”) did not really hit until after the weekend, when Gallup’s poll was over. That would be consistent with the data from the Rasmussen tracking poll which did show movement toward Bush on the days covered by the Gallup poll and then movement back toward Kerry afterward.
The final finding from the Gallup poll that is getting a big splash was in a USA Today story on TV ads producing a big Bush surge in battleground states. The story says that Bush has gone from 28 points down to Kerry in mid-February to a 6 point lead today in these states.
One would expect, given that the race has tightened, for Bush to have made the most progress where his ad spending was heaviest. But that’s quite a turnaround and one wonders about its magnitude. First of all, if we’re talking about the effects of the Bush ads, it would make more sense not to start with Gallup’s mid-February poll, which showed Kerry ahead by 12 points among LVs–Gallup’s biggest lead for Kerry and actually a bit of an outlier among other public polls.
It would make more sense instead to start with Gallup’s early March poll, which was proximate to the start of the Bush campaign’s heavy ad spending. We can proxy the Kerry lead at the time in these states by using the “purple state” breakout Gallup used in its report on that poll (see my March 10 post). In that breakout, Kerry was ahead by 16 points in the purple states, so the swing to today’s 6 point Bush lead is not quite as dramatic.
And I even wonder about that. It’s hard to find this movement toward Bush over the last three weeks in state polls that have been released in various battleground states. Given the magnitude of the shift implied by the Gallup data, you’d think these polls would be chock full of good news for Bush. But, by and large, they have not been.
So, in conclusion, I urge people to remain calm and focus on the many important ways in which Bush’s case for re-election is being steadily undermined. Gallup’s poll is, after all, only one among many public polls, despite the over-abundant media attention it tends to get. One has to consider Gallup’s results in this context to get the full story.