I wish they had just one pollster for everything.
Posted on 07/16/2004 11:17:28 AM PDT by areafiftyone
July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry gained the lead over President George W. Bush in three of the states both campaigns say will be battlegrounds in the November election, polls released this week showed. Nationally, the two remain tied for voter support.
Kerry led by 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters. In Michigan and New Mexico, he is ahead by 7 percentage points, according to the American Research Group Inc. The three states hold 43 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Kerry is tied in North Carolina, a state Bush won in 2000 by 12.8 percentage points, a Mason-Dixon Polling and Research survey found.
``The underlying numbers show there are concerns for the Bush administration,'' Dick Bennett, president of Manchester, New Hampshire-based American Research Group, said in an interview. ``Independent voters, who are considered the most persuadable, tend to be lining up behind Kerry.''
Both state and national polls show Kerry, 60, a four-term Massachusetts senator, may be getting a boost from selecting first- term North Carolina Senator John Edwards as his running mate. Edwards, 51, is viewed more favorably than Vice President Dick Cheney, 63, a Newsweek poll found.
Kerry and Bush, 58, would both receive 46 percent of the vote if the election were held today, a Washington Post poll conducted July 8-11 showed. A 4 percentage point lead for Kerry in a poll done by the Washington-based Gallup Organization for USA Today and Cable News Network survey was within the margin for error.
Bush led 48 percent to 47 percent in a USA Today/CNN poll conducted June 21-23, before Kerry selected Edwards. A Newsweek magazine poll of 1,001 registered voters conducted July 8-9 showed Kerry expanding his lead to six percentage points from 1 percentage point in a May survey.
`Terribly Close Race'
``What this shows -- more than we might have expected -- it is a terribly, terribly close race, more than I can remember any other race at this point in the cycle,'' said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution who's political experience extends to 1959, when he was a presidential speechwriter during the Eisenhower administration. Brookings is a Washington- based political and economic research organization.
The popular vote, reflected in national polls, doesn't determine the outcome. In the 2000 election, Democrat Al Gore, the former vice president, beat Bush nationwide by 542,895 votes. Gore lost the election because of Bush's 537-vote margin of victory in one state -- Florida -- after the U.S. Supreme Court halted a recount in a 5-4 decision. Florida's 25 electoral votes, awarded on a winner-take-all basis, gave Bush 271 electoral votes to Gore's 267.
Electoral Math
A candidate must win majorities in enough states to tally up at least 270 Electoral College votes, which are apportioned among the states based on the number of representatives in the U.S. House, set by population, and each state's two senators.
A review of state-by-state polls and historical voting data by Bloomberg News shows Bush ahead in 21 states that comprise 180 electoral votes. Kerry leads in 11 states with 168 electoral votes. In 18 states that have 190 electoral votes, including Pennsylvania and Ohio, results of the most recent polls are within the margin of error.
Kerry's 46 percent to 41 percent lead over Bush in Pennsylvania widened from a 1 percentage point advantage last month, according to the poll by Hamden, Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University. Pennsylvania holds 21 electoral votes.
The Quinnipiac survey, conducted July 6-11, sampled 1,577 registered voters and has a margin for error of 2.5 percentage points. In 2000, about a third of registered voters didn't cast ballots in the national election.
Michigan, New Mexico
In Michigan, Kerry is supported by 50 percent of likely voters in a July 6-8 survey by American research. A June 24-30 poll by the Detroit News showed Bush ahead in Michigan by 1 percentage point. Michigan casts 17 Electoral College votes.
Kerry also overtook Bush in New Mexico with 49 percent backing compared with 42 percent for Bush, according to American Research polling July 6-8. An April poll showed Bush leading 46 percent to 45 percent in New Mexico, which has 5 votes in the Electoral College.
The American Research Group's July polls in Michigan and New Mexico have an error margin of 4 percentage points. In both states, the organization surveyed 600 adults deemed likely to vote based on answers to questions about past voting behavior and intentions.
In Edwards's home state of North Carolina, Kerry and his running mate trail with 45 percent support compared with 48 percent for Bush and Cheney, according to Washington-based Mason-Dixon Polling. The results are within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Conflicting Results
The July 12-13 poll of 625 likely voters by Mason Dixon shows a closer race in North Carolina than a USA Today and CNN poll July 8-11, which found Bush leading by 15 percentage points among 680 likely voters surveyed. A Raleigh News & Observer poll taken June 13-16 showed Bush with 46 percent support and Kerry at 40 percent.
Bush won the state and its 14 electoral votes over Democrat Al Gore by 13 percentage points in 2000. The state, which now has 15 electoral votes, hasn't supported a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia Governor, ran and won in 1976.
In the Newsweek poll, 52 percent had a favorable opinion of Edwards, while 46 percent had a favorable opinion of Cheney. Seventy-seven percent said Edwards is personally likeable, while 49 percent said the same thing about Cheney.
Voters may prefer Edwards because of the attention he got while challenging Kerry for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst at the non-partisan Cook Political Report in Washington.
Vice Presidents
``John Edwards ran for president in the last few months and Cheney didn't,'' she said in an interview.
Duffy said she doubted voter perceptions of the vice presidential candidates will have a ``significant'' effect on the election.
The issues hurting Bush remain the war in Iraq and the U.S. economy, polls show. A majority of the public -- 53 percent -- disapprove of the president's handling of the economy, and 55 percent disapprove of his handling of the war, according to the Washington Post poll.
Bush regained the support of a majority of the public for his handling of the war on terrorism, with 55 percent approval in July compared with 50 percent in June, the Washington Post survey found. Questions about approval ratings and trust in the Post poll were based on telephone interviews with 850 randomly selected adults and have a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
``Ultimately, this race isn't very much about John Kerry,'' American Research's Bennett said. ``It's about voters assessing the performance of George Bush.''
Gallup has Bush up by 15% among likely voters in NC.
http://www.gallup.com/content/?ci=12367
I wish they had just one pollster for everything.
www.pollingreport.com is a great resource for you to at least view it all in one spot.
ridiculous! If true, the american people have gone around the bend.
polls don't mean didly. They can take a poll in my state of WA and no matter what Kerry will always be ahead. Bush hating is a trend here in Washington.
I am going nuts with these polls. I wish they had just one pollster for everything.
But since they are basically dishonest media, they led the article with the pretension that Kerry was within 3 points of Bush in NC ...
I don't see them mentioning Bush's new lead in Wisconsin either.
I get slightly agitated when I read or hear this.
I do not believe that Gore won more "legal votes." Voter fraud was rampant. We'll never know for sure.
I recall that several states stopped counting when the margin was so great that the absentee votes would have no affect on the outcome.
We don't know what the Florida vote count would have been if the networks had not prematurely call the state.
Bush did not challenge the votes in the states he lost. Some of which were close.
Both sides know that the electoral college is what counts. Both sides play to went the college, not the popular vote.
I have found the pollingreport.com site to be biased also. They don't show ALL the most current polls. They keep polls up on the site longer that lean Kerry. On another issue. Bush has spent a LOT of money on PA.. don't these figures show that he's falling behind there? That's not good news with as much money as he's spent on that state campaigning.
clearly you dont read the newspaper and blindly follow what this crazy cowboy resident has done to this country...thousands of people dead because they couldnt wait to go to war...stop watching fox news and wake up
Why are you here?
Having a boring afternoon over at Doofus Underground?
I was going to nuke you, but idiocy like this is a perfect example of the Left. Carry on, Kelly. I hope you have the courage to attempt to stick up for your crazy beliefs.
Bye.
Oh, cool, the troll gets to stick around and play!
Poll flag
Yeah, Al Queda's bad.
CRUSH kerry!
It's okay to have dissenting views, but try some adult grammar and punctuation if you want your opinion to have any hope of being considered among the company of people over the age of ten.
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