Kerry's Convention Bounce Sets Him Up To Be One Of The Biggest Losers of All-Time

[SamAdams76]

Matt Drudge is reporting tonight that John Kerry appears to have only a 4-point convention bounce (quoting Newsweak).

If true, a mere 4-point convention bounce is a disaster for Kerry. Just disastrous.

Let me tell you why and then I'll back it up with some hard data.

When you are running against an incumbent, you need a huge bounce to keep the race competitive. Especially since the incumbent will have the last word (by having the convention last). Bill Clinton got a 30 point bounce at his convention in 1992 and he needed almost all of it to beat the incumbent Bush Sr.

By comparison, Al Gore had a 19 point convention bounce in 2000 and still lost - it wasn't enough!

Here are the convention bounces of other losers...

Bob Dole (1996) - 15 points
George Bush Sr (1992) - 16 points
Mike Dukakis (1988) - 11 points
Walter Mondale (1984) - 16 points
Jimmy Carter (1980) - 17 points
Gerald Ford (1976) - 7 points
Hubert Humphrey (1968) - 4 points

Taking the cake for the most pathetic convention bounce in modern political history is George McGovern from 1972. Minus 3 points! And we all know how THAT race turned out.

So if the 4-point convention "bounce" for Kerry holds, he is in Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern territory here.

Personally, I think Newsweak is being overly optimistic. I don't sense any Kerry bounce out there. And that spells big trouble for the Kerry campaign as the Bush campaign is about to role into high gear and get the spotlight next month in the Big Apple.

[goldstategop]

I agree. Its really more like a negative bounce and the reason for the pitifully small size is that people saw everything they disliked about John F*ckin' to begin with. It began with his opening boast about being born in the "West Wing" and the implicit message to voters was, I don't need to earn your vote to be President - I'm entitled to it by virtue of where I was born. If that isn't enough to turn people off, I don't know what would. And the rest of the address was filled with enough arrogance, condescension, and smarminess to make you choke. People took their first real look at this guy and they don't like what they saw. Kerry needed a huge bounce just to put this race away and failed. My prediction is President Bush will get a 10 to 15 point bounce of his Convention and get to keep most of it by Election Day. The Democrats just blew it here.

[Rate_Determining_Step]

Plus, 'Toon was an engaging "New Democrat" (read: non-liberal - That's how he campaigned!) Southerner. Kerry is a haughty liberal Yankee with a nasally hifalutin accent.

There are so many ways Clinton was the Terminator of candidates. Kerry is the French candidate.

[ableChair]

Trust me, this data is erroneously favoring Kerry.

[Atchafalaya]

He reported for duty Wed. though. Dumbest move I think I've ever seen. = What's your sign pretty lady?

[Atchafalaya]

LOL!

[Lancey Howard]

Excellent analysis. Thanks for posting the hard data to back up my gut feeling. I sense absolutely no enthusiasm for Kerry or the Democrat Party at this point. None. Their convention just seemed to come and go, quietly. I mean, it's already over! It ended only Thursday night, but doesn't it seem like it ended a week or two ago?

[Atchafalaya]

your place or mine?

[windchime]

"I was amazed at how scripted and boring their convention was .. too scripted in fact                                                                                                                                                                                 And nothing of what their base wanted to hear"

Two-Faced “Progressive” Democrats One message in private, another in public.  National Review  7-29-04

[goldstategop]

The basic problem is the Democratic Convention looked and sounded like a 1964 Convention. From the atmospherics, tone, and message, one got the feeling one was living back in the 1960s. The candidate himself dwelled on his four months in Vietnam. No one got a sense this was a party looking ahead to the future or that it was even in the 21st Century at all. Eight years ago President Clinton boasted of building a bridge to the 21st Century. John F*ckin' wanted to time travel back to 1969. Weird. It made me feel like I was in a "Quantum Leap" episode and if the whole thing seemed like it was retro, the music helped to complete the nostalgia. The Democrats are stuck in the 60s reliving Vietnam while the rest us are concerned with 9/11 and Islamofascist terrorism in the new millenium. No wonder Kerry didn't get a bounce.

[paul51]

I think the old guidelines become less and less relevant. The country is increasingly more polarized for the last election and more so for this upcoming one. With that, the positions of the voters are more locked in and less likely to shift except for the ever decreasing number of so called swing voters. With that said, I feel certain Pres. Bush will win with probably more than 300 electoral votes because the GOP understands that winning the election means getting 270 electoral votes and has a strategy to achieve that. The Dims, will of course end up whining about the popular vote again because their election strategy will fail and one has to wonder is it because that's all they have to cry about or if they are so stupid that their strategy was focused on the wrong objective all along.

[Threepwood]

A few hundred nuts show up for a demonstration. Boo-hoo, the American democractic project is DOOMED. In tatters. Ruined. P-uh-leeze. *This* is you insidious Canadian tampering? You and I have very different assessments of the strength of American institutions. If you don't want Canadians showing up for demostrations, tell you border service to turn them away. JUST LIKE WE DID WITH CRACKPOT AMERICAN LIBERALS AT THE LAST G-10 CONFERENCE IN CANMORE.

Oh boy, let's look at the rest.

If American conservatives want to come protest in Canada, they should come. Soon. They can stay at my house. Butt in all you like. I know where you can park the buses cheap. As long as you don't break electorial laws, no-one will stop you from participating all you like.

Moving right along, Canadians are forbidden by American law to contribute to American candidates. Any such tampering is illegal. If you know of any, contact the Mounted Police, and they'll sort it out for you. The press here doesn't show any adoration for any particular candidate that I've seen, and I make it my business to look for that sort of thing.

So really, nothing you said had any value at all. Tough break.

[Threepwood]

That's great. You realized economics aren't alturistic. Care to connect it to the point that boycotting the Canadian economy to protest imaginary electorial interference is a crap idea?

[VaBthang4]

I've never understood this "It's gonna be a tight race" mantra.

John Kerry is gonna get absolutely crushed.
We've got the New York City convention coming and something nobody has really mentioned...the actual debates.

GW is gonna be his normal self and John Kerry is gonna be Al Bore II. Condescending/trying to hard to pretend like he's not elitest/faking normalcy/imagining he's making the slightest bit of sense.

The only way this thing'd be close is if it were September 10th, Teresa got hit by a Japanese bullet train, John Kerry actually got saved and GW just absolutely collapsed. None of that is gonna happen.

I'm gonna enjoy the ride. Not that there isnt allot of hard work left but...it's already over.

[goldstategop]

I disagree with you about it not being a rejection of leftist politics. At this convention, Kerry did his best to sound like a Democratic Ronald Reagan. The word "liberal" or "progressive" never once crossed a single speaker's lips. This is a party that could not tell people who it was and what it believed in. If this is a liberal country, Kerry should have said, "I am a liberal and proud of it," and then defended his Senate record. He did neither. In effect, the Democrats by running as pretend Republicans, have accepted the Right's indictment of them as being out of touch with mainstream America. And being downright phony adds to the sense they can't for whatever reason, offer the American people a real alternative.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

I agree. The Convention was so obviously an act, I'm surprised the bounce is that high. Talk about phony!

Sadly, as much as I hope for a Kerry defeat, I've no joy at the prospect of four more years of socialist agenda by the Bush Administration.

[GAGOPSWEEPTOVICTORY]

In the head-to-head two-way race, Kerry only managed a 2-point bounce in the Newsweek poll.

The race went from 51%-45% to 52%-44%.

It's important to keep in mind that this was a registered voter poll as opposed to a likely voter one. Hopefully in a few weeks, we begin to see that Kerry is toast.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/07-31-2004/0002222417&EDATE=

[tiki]

I hope you are right.

[GeorgiaYankee]

I saw that group on CNN, but only for about 3 secs!

[GeronL]

Hate only goes so far.

[SEA]

Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern territory????

Hubert Humphrey came very close to winning, while McGovern coundn't see victory with a telescope (only MA and DC). So it seems the "bounce" is not the final answer in the race, since they were close in the "bounce" yet very far apart in the election.

Don't kid yourself. This will be a difficult race. Kerry will be the beneficiary of all the press perks that Clinton got, yet without the Clinton baggage. And on the other side, let's face it, there are some problems with Bush. Need I recite?: massive spending, Iraq war, economy, etc. etc. etc. And with the media the way it is I wouldn't count on any bounce from the Republican convention.

Bush may win, but it is way too early to be jubilant.