The bad news keeps coming for the Kerry campaign as multiple polls show Kerry’s numbers dropping precipitously in even previously safe states. For example, two polls show Kerry’s lead in safely Democratic New York shrinking. The Marist College poll has him up by 11, while Quinnipac has him up by 7. While there’s no chance in hell of Bush winning New York unless all of Manhattan is abducted by aliens, these polls show that Kerry is in deep trouble with his Democratic base.
Nearby in New Jersey, what should be another very safe Democratic state now sees Bush in striking range. A SurveyUSA poll of likely voters has Bush ahead in the Garden State. When one starts extrapolating from these trends, it becomes rather clear that the Kerry campaign is in deep, deep trouble. Again, it’s highly unlikely that Bush would win New Jersey, but if these numbers are even close to accurate it means that Kerry will have to spend time and money rallying his troops in these normally safe Democratic states rather than trying to pick up the swing states like Ohio he’d need to win. The electoral battleground keeps shifting more and more towards Bush, which means that Kerry has to work harder and harder just to even the playing field.
Amazingly enough, SurveyUSA also has Bush up by the same amount in Illinois. Now, normally at this point one would be prudent to start writing SurveyUSA off as having a sample that’s tilted towards the Republicans. However, Chicago CBS affiliate CBS2’s poll largely corroborates those results. If SurveyUSA is picking up on a trend rather than facing a methodological screwup, it could be big. Given the number of polls supporting this slide, it’s clear that something is indeed going on.
The same is true with Pennsylvania, where another new poll has the race in a dead heat. Pennsylvania is one of Kerry’s must-win states, and if Bush can keep him on the defensive there, it’s going to help him enormously.
Taking Minnesota would be a dream for the GOP. Now it looks like that could just come to pass as Bush and Kerry are tied in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. The latest Mason-Dixon poll has Bush up by 2 points. With a very popular Republican governor and a Republican Party that’s well-organized and effective, Minnesota is very much in play for Bush at this point.
Fortunately for Kerry, Harris Interactive provides some good news, saying that the election is tied. However, when you have a large group of polls indicating one thing, and only a few saying the opposite, it’s not hard to guess what’s the statistical outlier and what isn’t.
So, what does this all mean? Well, there’s a clear trendline here. Bush has eroded Kerry’s margins in several key states, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. His numbers from Florida and Ohio indicate they’re much safer than they were last month. The President has now shifted the battlefield away from his must-win states to Kerry’s. Presidential campaigning is a game of momentum – you have to get it, and you have to keep it. Right now the momentum is dramatically towards the President, and Kerry not only has to erase that momentum, but build up his own.
Of course, with each passing day that job gets harder and harder. In two weeks, if Kerry has not erased these gains, it will become nearly impossible for him to catch up. The Democrat’s attempt at using the National Guard issue has fallen completely on its face. Kerry still hasn’t given us a plan for Iraq, and even though things in Iraq are very unsettled, it doesn’t appear to be moving the President’s numbers. The same holds true for the economy. The Democrats have fundamentally painted themselves into a corner with their constant attacks on the President. At this point, what more can the say about Bush? They’ve already accused him of being AWOL, a chimp, Hitler, a tool of the Saudis/Jews/Halliburton/Drug Companies/Enron/Satan/Cheney/Neoconservatives/the Bavarian Illuminati/the Christian Right, etc… Unless they have pictures of Bush consuming bawling infants while jerking off to Mein Kampf there’s really not much they can say that hasn’t already been said in any number of Bush-bashing tomes that are destined for the pulper on November 3rd.
What has been notably absent is anything from the Kerry campaign. What is Kerry’s plan on Iraq? Let’s see what he has to say about it:
Not under the current circumstances, no. There are none that I see. I voted based on weapons of mass destruction. The President distorted that, and I’ve said that. I mean, look, I can’t be clearer. But I think it was the right vote based on what Saddam Hussein had done, and I think it was the right thing to do to hold him accountable. I’ve said a hundred times, there was a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. The president chose the wrong way. Can’t be more direct than that.
That was Kerry yesterday on Don Imus’ radio show. Anyone spot a cogent position there? I sure as hell didn’t. The voters certainly didn’t either.
Kerry has a limited amount of time to make up a lot of ground, and at this point he might as well be starting from scratch. Does that mean that the Republicans can afford to be complacent? Absolutely not. Does that mean that Kerry can’t pull himself out of this hole? Don’t assume that until November 3rd.
However, what this does indicate is that the Kerry campaign is in full-on meltdown mode, and Bush can use that to his advantage. Remember, to borrow from Hugh Hewitt, if it’s not close, they can’t cheat, which is why getting every Republican to the polls on Election Day is as critical now as it would be if Kerry were ahead.
What a shocker that you cite only Bush-friendly polls from Minnesota and ignore the poll showing Kerry leading by nine points. It’s almost as if you’re picking and choosing which polls you want to report on!
The Illinois, New Jersey and New York polls are certainly concerning, but I’ll hold out for further numbers before I buy into Bush being within four points of Kerry in Illinois. It’s fairly amusing how people like yourself can see irrational degrees of poll fluctuations (Missouri tied versus Bush leading MO by 14 in the same week), yet still insist upon the gravitas of whatever the latest poll says (at least as long as the poll numbers favor Bush).
To call Kerry’s situation an implosion is overstating things. He’s clearly hit a prolonged soft patch, but national polls indicate he’s again closing the gap from after the convention, and he still has the final 50 days of the campaign and three, er two, debates to reverse matters. The fact that Survey USA polls from Illinois and Wisconsin show diminished support for Kerry in the first half of September matters about as much as the Iowa and New Hampshire polls last December showing Howard Dean winning by double digits six weeks before the official contest. Clearly, the electorate is far less set in stone that we’re led to expect. If we’re to believe New York went from a 25-point Kerry margin to a 7-point Kerry margin in one month, it’s pretty obvious that a very large percentage of Americans haven’t fully made up their mind about this election. Given that this is a referendum against an incumbent with a universally atrocious record, that doesn’t bode well for BUsh.
I didn’t include the Minnesota Poll because it’s one of the most methodologically skewed polls ever. It’s slightly less accurate than reading chicken entrails.
The individual poll numbers aren’t that important. Does it matter if Kerry is ahead by 2 or Bush is ahead by 4 in New Jersey? Ultimately, not that much. However, the trends are what matter, and the trendlines forecast a sound defeat for John Kerry.
The trendlines have been nearly as bad for Bush in recent months and could easily become that way again with as many Americans who believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.
You cited a GOP Strategic Vision poll for Ohio yesterday that was wildly out of line with reality. Suggesting you omitted reporting on the Minnesota Poll based on poor poll methodology would be more convincing if you held the same standards for obviously erroneous polls favoring Bush.
The Strategic Vision poll was in line with previous polls that showed a significant Bush lead. Yes, SV tends to have a pro-Republican bias, but not to the level of the Minnesota Poll, which has a methodology specifically designed to inflate Democratic standings by very unreasonable margins.
Even if you set the SV poll aside in Ohio, both Gallup and Survey USA showed significant Bush leads, which also confirms anecdotal evidence from around the state.
A nine-point Kerry lead in Minnesota seems closer to reality than a mere four-point Kerry lead in Illinois or a 12-point Bush lead in Ohio. The bottom line is that all of them are wrong.