Regards, Ivan
Posted on 08/26/2004 3:22:52 AM PDT by MadIvan
President George W. Bush heads into next week's Republican national convention with voters moving slightly in his direction since July amid signs that John Kerry has been nicked by attacks on his service in Vietnam, a Los Angeles Times poll has found.
For the first time this year in a LA Times survey, Mr Bush led Mr Kerry in the presidential race, drawing 49 per cent among registered voters, compared to 46 per cent for the Democrat.
In a LA Times poll just before the Democratic convention last month, Mr Kerry held a 2 percentage-point advantage over Mr Bush.
That small shift from July is within the poll's margin of error. But it fits with other findings in the LA Times poll showing the electorate edging toward Mr Bush over the past month on a broad range of measures, from support for his handling of Iraq to confidence in his leadership and honesty.
At the same time, although a solid majority of Americans say they believe Mr Kerry served honorably in Vietnam, the poll shows that the fierce attacks on the senator from a group of Vietnam veterans criticising both his performance in combat and anti-war protests at home has left some marks: Mr Kerry suffered small but consistent erosion compared to July on questions relating to his Vietnam experience, his honesty and his fitness to serve as commander-in-chief.
The LA Times poll interviewed 1,597 adults, including 1,352 registered voters nationwide, from August 21 through August 24. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
With independent voters splitting evenly in the survey between the two men, one key to Mr Bush's tentative new advantage is his greater success at consolidating his “base”. While just 3 per cent of voters who call themselves Republicans say they will vote for Mr Kerry, Mr Bush is drawing just over one-seventh of all Democrats, and fully one-fifth of Democrats who consider themselves moderate or conservative, the poll found.
Mr Bush's advantage remains 3 percentage points when Ralph Nader, the liberal independent candidate, is added to the mix. In a three-way race, Bush draws 47 per cent, compared to 44 per cent for Mr Kerry and 3 per cent for Mr Nader, whose access to the ballot in many key states remains uncertain.
For all the promising signs for Mr Bush, the poll finds the president still threatened by a consistent current of uneasiness about the nation's direction. In the survey, a slight majority of voters say they believe the country is on the wrong track. A majority also says the country is not better off because of his policies and needs to set a new course. And a solid plurality believes his policies have hurt rather than helped the economy.
Together those results suggest that a substantial audience in the electorate remains open to change. But amid the firefight over Mr Kerry's Vietnam service, and uncertainty about his policy plans, the Democrat still has not built a constituency for his candidacy as large as the audience for change in the abstract, the poll suggests. Nearly one in five voters who say the country needs to change policy direction is not supporting Mr Kerry, according to the poll.
At the same time, just 18 per cent of those surveyed say they “believe that Kerry misrepresented his war record and does not deserve his war medals,” while 58 per cent say Kerry “fought honorably and does deserve” the medals.
Attitudes on that question divide sharply along party lines. As many Republicans believe Kerry is lying as believe he fought honorably. By nearly ten to one, Democrats say Kerry served honorably.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
and this is registered voters and LA Times.
Methinks I smell a LANDSLIDE ala 1988.
Will be AWESOME to see it.
Better still, to see the libtards freaked out and stressing on 3 Nov.
The new Gallup Poll will be released today, let's see if Bush's lead continues.
Thanks for the ping to some happy news.
You've just brightened up my morning! :-)
I thought the bounce was supposed to come *AFTER* the convention!?! Sheesh! ;P
I went over to DU to see what their take was on the LA Times poll. Comments ranged from the Times being a shill for Bush to Rove had tampered with the poll. And of course the obligatory comment that the Times is part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
LOL
The screeching sounds coming from the Kerry campaign and the Libnuts is increasing!
The Swifties have provided a nice boost going into the convention. Hopefully the Pubs do well, the left show their @ss and we get a real nice bump coming out. Then we have 9-11 which should remind people why "WE NEED A PRESIDENT WHO UNDERSTANDS THE NATURE OF THE THREAT AND THE NATURE OF THE WAR ON TERRA!!!" (end fake Kerry pompous drone).
To me the real challenge will be to keep up the "Big Mo" through October. If Kerry continues to unravel it should be no problem. There just isn't any "there" there.
"Better still, to see the libtards freaked out and stressing on 3 Nov."
Bush wins the election and 30 million rats hire John Edwards to sue their insurance companies for PTSD.
The Fader Faster Principle:
Yesterday's CW: "[T]his is now John Kerry's contest to lose"!
Tomorrow's CW: Mission Accomplished
ahh yes...the trolls are shifting in our favor and it's not even convention time yet.
Wonder how far the trolls will have us ahead after the convention and after W 'brings it on' with his latest ads on Lurch.
Could be just that...a landslide.
There is no reason for Bush to lose at this point, unless something huge happens that would negatively impact his lead. I think that we need to prepare ourselves for what happens AFTER the election. The Dems will insist that the Repubs have "stolen this election" once again by telling lies about Kerry and soiling his reputation, blah blah blah. They will point to the fact that Kerry was ahead until the "smear campaign" began.(that's debatable) They will not accept defeat and will probably start filing lawsuits since that is where they usually have success. Kerry already admitted that they have their lawyers waiting in the wings. I also think they will be pushing for impeachment because of the Iraq prison "abuse" mess. Let's hope we keep all of our House seats this term.
The problem is, we are all voting AGAINST KERRY...., at least I am. The ONLY thing I can bring up for Bush is that he seems to be honest, decent, and forceful in the war on terror.
Our domestic stuff, ESPECIALLY our runaway spending, is a mess. I wish I could vote Kerry as a protest vote, but the stakes are too high.
We cannot keep this crap up forever, though.
You say we are all voting against Kerry and you would like to vote for Kerry as a protest? Bud, you are in the wrong forum and your handle seems to tell me you are some kind of chronic loser.
I chose the moniker deliberately. Glad you like it. I meant I would like to tell Bush in some sort of way that he cannot continue to invoke the name of conservatism and spend like Imelda Marcos on vacation. I pal around with alot of folks on the "solid" base side of the republicans (the religious right) and I hear more and more talk about the constitution party.
I don't think they will stay home (like I said, the stakes are too high).
However, this cannot go on forever.
Here are the LA Times August 21st-24th, 2004 published poll internal numbers for political affiliation for the three-way race between Bush, Kerry and Nader. These LA Times poll data are in a table format for easy reading.
This national three-way race poll which had 1,352 Registered voters, now shows Bush in the lead by 3% with Bush 47%, Kerry 44%, Nader 3%. The MoE is ±3.0% for this LA Times poll question number six.
Source: LA Times Presidential poll - August 21-24, 2004 PDF file, released August 25th, 2004: Question #6, page 9 of 25.
Here below is the distribution of the 1,352 registered voters necessary to recreate the numbers show in the table directly above. Remember that the numbers below must be rounded to NO decimal places to match the above LA Times published data.
So the partisan affiliation weightings that were used by the LA Times are indicated in the table below. Remember, because of LA Times rounding of their poll numbers, the below breakdowns might have a ±1.2% variance. That being said, it appears that this latest LA Times three-way race presidential preference poll has 9.1% more Democrats than Republicans in its sample population. A 2%-3% advantage for Democrats over Republicans might be a more realistic set of demographic splits.
So what would the LA Times poll look like with a more reasonable national sample of say 35.1%(R), 37.1%(D), 27.8%(I)? Look below and you would see that Bush would now have a 7.8% lead, which would be clearly outside the 'Margin of Error' of the LA Times poll. Kerry has been sinking swiftly...
Hope this helps...
dvwjr
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