Taking a gander at the electoral map at electoral-vote.com, you notice that, here at the very end of the natural Bush flow in the ebb and flow cycle of the campaign season, Bush shot up and Kerry shot down one day, to a ridiculous situation where Bush was ahead 331 to 207; and then shot down while Kerry rose again to the more sensible and unsettled 256 to 239 advantage. (and even there, you have to believe that the Maryland result is an anomolie (things do not change that quickly) and toss that one back to Kerry).

This is the result of little other than the latest Zogby polls replacing the latest Gallup polls. Zogby points something completely funky out about the Gallup polls, and since it looks like Gallup is using this same methodology straight to the election — you can toss out the Gallups in your understanding of the horse race.

Nuts and bolts look like this:
Gallup’s sample:
Total Sample: 767 GOP: 305 (40%) Dem: 253 (33%) Ind: 208 (28%)

Last three elections… take it away Gallup:

The spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000.

That’s a rather high percentage of Republicans. So, in that formation, the weird effect we just had where the latest Gallup result moved Bush ahead from a 10 or 11% lead to a 14% lead, while Zogby moved Bush from a 4 point lead to a tie, can be explained by Bush consolidating Republicans, losing some Independents. Tricky, ain’t it? (Actually, I need to take a peek back to see if that is indeed what just happened… I may be wrong.)

We’re in polarized land, where something like 90% of Republicans are voting for Bush and 90% of Democrats (probably a little less than the Republicans) are voting for Kerry. You can excuse these guys and Lincoln Chafee as being in the ten percent minority. (Chafee says that he is thinking of writing in Bush’s father, which begs a question: in the event that his vote is counted, would the vote-counters count it as “a vote for Bush”, or would they teek heed of the “H” in between “George” and “W Bush”?)

Take a closer look at the “Democrats for Bush” page: take a look at their bookmarks. These links, you can pretty much expect to find on any right-wing or conservative website’s page of link… right wing radio pundit Sean Hannity, the Scaife founded Free Republic, and on and on. Now, take a look at the Replicans for Kerry link-page. If the Republicans for Kerry page had the same jibe as the “Democrats for Bush” page, you would find — say Democratic Underground, Moveon.org and partisan sites like that. What you see are a couple articles (granted, Oliphant is a liberal), the non-partisan factcheck.org , … a better comparison might be here, which are, if they’re democratic frong organizations, are at least vying for a breed of Republicans … other than the special type of Democrat who inherited their Democratic label from their grandparents, who hated Lincoln, and haven’t bothered to change their registration yet.

Other than that: it looks like the Republican expected to win the senate seat from South Carolina has wounded himself a bit, which has helped drag the Bush numbers down in that very conservative state. Two things are hurting the Republicans, and allowing the Democrats to move up in the polls: (1) advocacy of a national sales tax, which opens up “class warfare rhetoric”. AND (2) (hee hee hee hee)… backdoor draft. I had noticed, a month or two ago, a story coming out of South Carolina of ensuring controversy when the South Carolina Democratic Party made explicit in their voter-drive the issue of the draft. I more or less dismissed it — a desparate party with few prospects jumps to what they could find. But– they might be onto something there, electorally speaking. (Edwards came out swinging, and the Bush — Cheney team issued “that’s absurd” statements that, read in between the lines, suggest mum’s the word) … But, for Bush, if I accept that Kerry has a chance in South Carolina, I have to accept that Bush has a chance in New Jersey. To partisans on both sides, I ask: Do you believe in miracles?

(A giant caveat for the preceeding post: the Cell phones are destroying everybody’s polling ability thesis is gaining momentum.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 at 5:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.