Kerry campaign forced to regroup

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Democrats yesterday said Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign is off track and blamed television ads by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, President Bush's bounce from the Republican convention, and themselves.
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"Mistakes were made," James Carville, Democratic strategist, said of the campaign's August operations.
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Mr. Kerry "is not satisfied with the state of his campaign" and will retool it this week, Mr. Carville told NBC's "Meet the Press."
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"It's true," Kerry strategist Tad Devine told "Fox News Sunday." "Our message could not get through the way we wanted it to in August..."
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But the Bush team noted the scale of the task facing Mr. Kerry, who now trails in polls by double-digit margins.
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Two polls show that Mr. Bush received a substantial boost from last week's Republican National Convention. Time magazine, in a poll released Friday, found Mr. Bush up 52 percent to 41 percent over Mr. Kerry. A Newsweek poll, out Saturday, had him up 54 percent to 43 percent. Both polls have a margin of error of four percentage points and were a statistical tie before the convention.
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"There's never been a challenger that has come back after being down double digits after the convention, after their incumbent's convention. That's never happened," Bush strategist Matthew Dowd told "Fox News Sunday."
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The Kerry campaign is banking on a new round of paid television advertisements to catch up to Mr. Bush.
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"We're going to be able talk about issues like jobs and health care and the fact that John Kerry wants to take this nation in a new direction," Mr. Devine said. "And I think he's going to win the election because he's right on the issues and he has a very powerful message."
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/funct...6-123726-2140r

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"John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and my comrades in the prison camps in North Vietnam took torture to avoid saying. He sold us out."
- Paul Galanti, US P.O.W.

Well, we'll see. Before he went under the knife this morning, Bill Clinton advised John Kerry to get off the subject of Vietnam and to focus on healthcare and the economy. We'll see if Kerry takes the advice.

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"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

What Matthew Dowd told Foxnews may be true but there was no double digit post-convention bounce. In fact there was no bounce at all, the daily Rasmussen poll taken after the convention "Sept 3-5" shows Bush ahead by one point (47.6% - 46.5%), exactly the same lead as he had prior to the convention on August 30 (47%-46%)
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Pres...cking_Poll.htm


"It remains a very close and very competitive race," said pollster John Zogby, whose latest national survey during the convention showed Bush gaining 7 percentage points on Kerry to lead by two. "It's close nationwide and it's close in the key battleground states."
Zogby released his own set of 20 state-by-state polls on Sunday showing Kerry with narrow leads in 11 states, Bush ahead in eight and one state, Nevada, an exact dead heat.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...8&pageNumber=1


Now, regarding the polls with double digit lead:

The number one mistake a pollster can make is to conduct a survey from an unrepresentative sample population. That is exactly what Newsweek has done. Of course Bush is going to lead in a poll with a sample that is disproportionately made up of Republicans. In reality, in the Newsweek poll Kerry is only down by 5.6 in a three way trial heat, and thus is probably only down by 4 or 5 in a two way trial heat.
Five points is a lot less than eleven, especially when one considers that this is probably Bush's peak (almost every candidate reaches their peak immediately after their convention). Kerry is clearly in the game. Spread the word--this poll stinks.
http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/9/4/154842/1919

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The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself. George W. Bush

Take a look at this analysis of the Newsweek poll - the real Bush advantage may be larger than the poll's published results show:

Scroll Down to "First Look At A Big Bounce?"

http://www.polipundit.com/2004_09_05...43851196284135

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As CrushKerry observed, GOP respondents outweighed Democratic respondents in the poll, 374 to 303. With 300 Independents noted,that works out to 38.3% Republicans, 31.0% Democrats, and 30.7% Independents of the 977 total from the three. But the Newsweek poll states that 1,188 respondents were polled, with 1,088 Registered voters. And while the press release takes 20 pages to print and read, Newsweek doesn’t say, exactly, how those remaining 111 to 211 respondents breakdown. Also, I took the time to break down the respondents’ percentages: If the Rep/Dem/Ind response was unweighted, Bush would have led Kerry in the poll 58.0% to 42.0%, a sixteen-point lead, not eleven. So, while they don’t say exactly how they weighted their poll, Newsweek did weight the poll to balance things more towards the Democrats.
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First off, Newsweek noted that the interviews took place both Thursday and Friday. Thursday respondents preferred Bush to Kerry, 49% to 43%, with 3% for Nader and 5% undecided. On Friday, those respondents chose Bush 54% to Kerry’s 38%, with 4% for Nader and 4% undecided. That means that Bush’s speech gained Bush support, and did so directly at the cost to Kerry’s numbers. Kerry’s speech did not help him; Bush’s speech clearly did.
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What about women? Kerry was ahead by an average of 48.6% to 40.5% this summer, and just before the convention, Kerry was ahead 48.7% to Bush’s 43.0%. Newsweek now shows women prefer President Bush to John Kerry, 50% to 43%, a 12-point swing! It seems, those people who figured Laura Bush for only a marginal value in this election, figured wrong.
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"John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and my comrades in the prison camps in North Vietnam took torture to avoid saying. He sold us out."
- Paul Galanti, US P.O.W.

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"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

Baloney! Newsweek and Time are BOTH liberal-leaning sources. If they were going to have any kind of Unrepresentative population, they'd make sure it favored Democrats. Besides, the point is to compare to their last polls. So unless they changed their manner of polling for this one poll....then it's very relevant. I'm only guessing here.....but I'm betting that IF 2 weeks from now Newsweek and Time showed a big gain for Kerry, you'd be a big supporter of their polling methods, eh?

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"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

Take it from a professional (republican) pollster:

Differences Between Polls

September 6, 2004--We have been flooded with e-mails asking (in varying tones of politeness) why our poll results seem different from those released by Time and Newsweek.

There are two basic explanations, one involving our polling data and one involving the newsmagazines. For those who need to know the answer before the explanation, the bottom line is that the President is ahead by 4 to 5 points at this time. That's a significant improvement over the past few weeks, but not a double digit lead.

Our current poll (showing the President ahead by just over a point) includes a Saturday sample that is way out of synch with all the days before it and with the Sunday data that followed. In fact, Saturday's one-day sample showed a big day for Kerry while all the days surrounding it showed a decent lead for the President.

It seems likely that Saturday reflects a rogue sample (especially since it was over a holiday weekend). But, it remains in our 3-day rolling average for one more day (Tuesday's report). If we drop the Saturday sample from our data, Bush is currently ahead by about 4 percentage points in the Rasmussen Reports Tracking Poll.

That's still a smaller lead than shown by Time and Newsweek. Those polls appear to have the mirror image problem of a Los Angeles Times poll in June reportedly showing Kerry with a huge lead. That LA Times survey included too many Democrats in their sample. Today, it seems likely that Time and Newsweek included too many Republicans.

Time reports that Republicans will vote for Bush by an 89% to 9% margin; Democrats for Kerry by an 80% to 9% margin; and, unaffiliated voters for Bush 43% to 39%.

Four years ago, 35% of voters were Republicans, 39% were Democrats, and the rest were unaffiliated. If you apply those percentages to the Time internals, you find Bush up by about 3 percentage points. If you do the same with the Newsweek internal numbers, you find Bush with a six point lead. Those results are very close to the Rasmussen Reports data (excluding the Saturday sample).

All of this leads me to conclude that the President is currently ahead by 4 or 5 percentage points.

As always, it's useful to use common sense when reviewing poll data. If a poll suggests that 10 or 20 percent of Americans are changing their mind on a regular basis, it should be viewed with caution. Most of the time, you will find that the partisan mix of the polling sample is changing more than the actual perceptions of voters.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Poll...20Sept%206.htm

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The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself. George W. Bush

CNN/Gallup poll was just released:

Bush 52% - Kerry 45% among likely voters - 2 point convention bounce
Bush 49% - Kerry 48% among registered voters

I am not saying whether it's good or bad but it sure does not look like a double digit bounce (or double digit lead) to me.

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The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself. George W. Bush

Doesn't this look seriously like Kerry people are going to stay home on election day? Are these people saying, "I'm registered to vote. I would vote for Kerry. But, I'm unlikely to vote?" Apparently, several % said that.

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Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive. - Theodore Roosevelt

KenLAY WROTE 'I hear you but I still think that Kerry is cooked But I was wrong Once , last millennium....