Battleground States Poll: (Kerry is ahead in 12/16 Zogby sauced battleground state polls)

wsj.com ^ | 05/24/04 | wsj

[KQQL]

Zogby 16 state polls

May 18-23

Bush and Kerry may be speaking to all of America, but their campaign advisers are focusing on a narrower slice of the population and targeting the candidates' messages to voters in particularly contentious states. Zogby Interactive is conducting polls in 16 of those states chosen by WSJ.com. See the latest results.

[Dales]

I do not know which way things will go. I do not think the race will end up close electorally. I just don't know which guy is going to forge ahead. I think it should be Bush, but I am not convinced it will be.

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

If some disaster doesn't materialize of it's own accord, Bush wins hands down. He has already been put to the acid test, and appears to be surviving with his base intact. This will impress moderates/undecideds.

I also expect some senstational terrorist attack on US institutions (but not US soil), perhaps shortly before the Republican Convention. But unlike Spain, it will only steel the our national resolve! 'America is evil' will not sell well this year.

[Dales]

I didn't even notice this last night, but it just hit me that out of the 11 polls you posted there, 4 of them were outside the margin of error for at least one of the candidates.

That's not good accuracy- that's about where Rasmussen was in his polling in the battleground states in 2000.

[Dales]

I stopped by the library here on the way to work to check something. My recollection was correct- the Zogby tracking polls in 2000 were definitely not these online polls. The local paper here, the Post-Gazette, was one of the five media outlets that together sponsored the tracking polls you quoted and they were traditional phone polls.

I was wrong about one thing- in my last post I said that 4 of the 11 you quoted were outside the MoE on at least one of the candidates. I thought I remembered his MoE as being 3 for those, but it was 4, so that means that only 3 of the 11 were outside the MoE, which is still three times the rate one would expect due to random variance (22 different measures, 1 in 20 should be outside MoE).

[AntiGuv]

I stand thoroughly corrected!

[miltonim]

http://www.dcpoliticalreport.com/2004/Pres2004Polls.gif

[the Real fifi]

Dem Panic Watch Bonus: Kerry defenders (and numerous kf e-mailers) like to argue that by historical standards he is in relatively good shape against an incumbent. That's true in many comparisons (e.g. 1992). The template I carry around in my head is the 1988 race, in which a beatable, (semi-incumbent) Bush was challenged by somewhat unexciting, respectable, not widely-known Massachusetts politician. And at this point (May) in the 1988 campaign, Michael Dukakis was ahead by 16 points, 54-38, according to this Gallup poll trend line. If Kerry can't top the charismatic Dukakis, I suggest "panic" is not a completely irrational response among Democrats Kausfiles

[Brandon]

That's quite an interesting map. The gray states ("no polls available") all look like safe for Bush to me. Of the green states ("too close to call") all were for Bush in 2000, except for California. Interestingly, the number of EVs in Cali is almost exactly equal to the number of EVs in the vulnerable Bush states (55 for Cali vs. 59 for the other five).

If Cali really is too close to call, and if each candidate wins the states where he is currently leading, this suggests an interesting strategy: Pour a lot of resources into Cali. If you win, then Kerry has to run the table in the Bush 2000 states that are marked as "too close to call". If he misses even one of them, he loses the election.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"1948: No incumbent pres, incumbent VP Truman vs Dewey"

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One nit: Truman was the incumbent president in 1948, since FDR died in 1945. While Truman had not been elected president, neither had LBJ when you correctly referred to him as the incumbent president in 1964 (nor Ford in 1976).

[Dales]

Correct. I screwed that up.

[91B]

Thanks for posting that.

[txjeep]

Zogby's polls are really looking suspect lately. He really seems to overpoll Dems. I have been one of his online polling subjects for several years. I have stopped responding lately though since he just seems to overpoll the lefties and then sells his results.