That isn’t the result of the latest poll, but my guess as to where this race will be. I think that Bush will maintain his lead but Kerry shored up his numbers with swing voters. Realistically Kerry was as low as he could go in this race this month. Kerry isn’t going to do worse than 42%-45% no matter what – the Bush haters would see to that. At the same time, President Bush’s base is secure, and I don’t think Kerry changed any minds on that. We know who President Bush is, and while his debate performance was crummy, voters aren’t debate judges. We all know Bush is a horrible speaker but believes what he believes and sticks to it. My prediction is a slight Kerry bounce, but not enough to give him the race. Drudge was reporting earlier that even Joe Lockhart thought it was a draw – and in the end I think that’s true in terms of the electoral momentum. Kerry achieved his objective, which was to keep this race close. Bush achieved his objective which was to not screw up and lose his lead. In the end, it seems like a lot of voters tuned out the end where Kerry really took off. We’ll see how the polls match these predictions by next week.
Gallup has the results of their snap post-debate polling. The numbers didn’t move much. Bush has maintained his strong lead on national security and Iraq, even though Kerry did make up some lost ground.
The ABC post-debate poll finds the same thing. People’s views did not change much after this debate. I’m still thinking Kerry will get a soft bounce just based on the fact that he looked Presidential, but I’m not sure it will last. In the end, I think people just trust and like Bush more, and Kerry’s technical win didn’t endear him to enough people to swing this race to where it was pre-RNC.
Let’s say the aggregate will be Bush 48, Kerry 47 after the debate. I’m expecting a weekend-long flogging of Bush’s performance by the punditocracy, which isn’t gonna help his cause any. Then again, that’s the exact opposite of how the first Gore-Bush debate unfolded in the days following, so perhaps Bush will be win the deferred debate as the media was found of doing for him last time. Either way, Kerry jumped the biggest hurdle, but is far from the finish line. There is no question that both Bush and Cheney will revert to their zero-expectations mode in the rest of the debates….Cheney because he’s the old grouch up against the charming lawyer, and Bush because Kerry one-upped him in the first debate. With that in mind, Kerry needs to perform as good and Bush as badly in the second and third debates or Bush will be declared the winner. As for the VP debate, there’s a strong possibility that Cheney will be able to play Lloyd Bentsen to John Edwards’ Dan Quayle….the insider policy wonk making the pretty boy seem better suited for Vice-President of the fraternity than VP of the United States. There’s still the potential for a stylistic knockout blow against Kerry-Edwards, but I’m relieved the first act is over with Kerry getting momentum.
Like your website, Mr. Reding. Agree that Bush didn’t do that great in the first debate, but he did get in some effective counterpunches I thought, regarding the effect of Kerry’s denigrating comments about our allies, Mr. Allawi, etc. Kerry also contradicted himself by saying we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq, but then refusing to say that our soldiers’ efforts and sacrifices were in vain.