Politics Blog: More on the bounce that wasn't

The Washington Times ^ | August 18,2004 | Don Lambro

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More on the bounce that wasn't

Something strange happened a week or two after John Kerry was nominated for president in Boston: President Bush went up in the polls. Not just in his job approval polls, but also in the head-to-head polls that now show him running ahead of the Massachusetts liberal.

Presidential nominees usually get a pretty decent bounce in the polls after a week of nationally-televised self-promotion at their conventions; but Mr. Kerry did not. His national numbers rose an anemic 5 points or so (more in some of the key battleground states), but that bounce quickly fell to earth a week or so later.

If that had happened to Mr. Bush at his convention, which will be held at the end of this month, the liberal national news media would have been all over him with political obituaries. But strangely, Mr. Kerry's post-convention anemia elicited little serious analysis from the political chattering class on the left. I wonder why.

But back to the latest polls. One week after the convention, the Gallup Poll -- the most respected polling organization in the business -- went into the field to ask likely voters what they thought of the job that the president was doing and who they intended to vote for on Nov. 2. The response: Mr. Bush's job approval scores had inched up from 50 percent to 51 percent. No president has ever lost re-election when his job approval numbers were more than 50 percent at this point in the campaign.

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Please keep in mind that the polls are skewed in favor of Kerry right now. As we get closer to the election they will have to bring them more in-line. Or they lack any creditability, it happened with Dukakus vs Reagan.

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