Race for President Falls Back into Dead Heat

Race for President Falls Back into Dead Heat, New Zogby Interactive Presidential Battleground Poll Reveals

The race for President of the United States continued to tighten during the last two weeks, as President Bush continued his long, hard slog back toward parity with Democratic challenger John Kerry, throwing the race into a virtual dead heat, the latest package of polls by Zogby Interactive shows.

Based on individual polls conducted simultaneously Sept. 13-17 in 20 battleground states, neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Kerry holds a clear-cut lead in enough states to win the Electoral College votes required to capture the White House. Here’s the latest chart:

ZOGBY'S RACE SO FAR:	Sept 21	Sept 7	Aug. 23	Aug. 3	Jul 26	Jul 10	Jun 20	Jun 6	May 23
President Bush	241	222	214	215	220	205	285	242	218
Senator Kerry	264	273	286	291	275	322	253	296	320

Two states remain too close to call: Florida (no surprise) and Arkansas, home to former President Clinton, who has recently generated sympathy with his successful quadruple bypass surgery and headlines with his emergence as a chief advisor to Mr. Kerry, fielding strategic questions from his New York City hospital bed. Arkansas, with 6 electoral votes, had been in the pocket of Mr. Bush, who won it four years ago. By itself, it is unimportant in the presidential election. However, paired with one other small state, it could make all the difference in the world. Because the race is so close this year, every little state matters.

Undecided Florida and Arkansas together comprise 33 votes.

Missouri and Nevada have moved from the undecided category into the Bush camp since the last polling, done two weeks ago. Colorado also moved, albeit slightly, from the Kerry column to the Bush column, where it resided in the election four years ago.

The Electoral College count compiled in this report assumes that the 30 states not included in the package of surveys would go to the candidate of the party they supported in the 2000 election. Under this assumption, Mr. Bush begins with a base of 142 votes, compared to 172 for Mr. Kerry. In the 20 states in the polls, 224 Electoral College votes are up for grabs. Each state poll contains its own margin of error, as stated at the bottom of each state chart.

The winner of the election must amass 270 votes.

The last two weeks on the campaign trail have had the candidates hurtling forward while looking in the rearview mirror, as partisans continued to debate what the candidates did – or did not do – 30 years ago during the Vietnam War. The focus shifted somewhat from the activities of Mr. Kerry to those of Mr. Bush. Front and center was a report by CBS news that, essentially, said Mr. Bush entered the Guard because of privilege and therefore avoided service in Vietnam. It said he shirked his duties during service in the Texas and Alabama Air National Guard, but what might have been a damning report was itself undermined by the use of documents of questionable veracity.

The story lingered well past its original broadcast on 60 Minutes II, but only because its premise was methodically debunked by news critics and Republicans interested in defending the President. By last week’s end, the big question was not how badly Mr. Bush had been hurt by the CBS report, but how badly the news network had been damaged by its apparent embrace of phony documents to prop up a story against the President.

Mr. Kerry, meanwhile, taking advice from Mr. Clinton and several of his former aides who have been pulled into the directionless Kerry campaign, adopted a harder edge on the campaign trail, striking blows on several key domestic issues, including health care insurance, taxes, and the deficit. While he has also hit Mr. Bush over the handling of the Iraq war, he has mostly stayed away from the President’s conduct of the war on terror, a topic of high concern among likely voters, polls show.

The Zogby Interactive polls show Mr. Kerry has failed to gain traction, and has lost the advantage in the race he first built by naming North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as his running mate. Day to day on the campaign trail, he changes topics from one domestic issue to another, and voters may be struggling to keep up with him.

The closeness of the race, as shown in this report, gives rise to that most intriguing of parlor game questions – could the Bush-Kerry contest end in a tie?

Using the current Zogby Interactive poll data, it is now easy to construct a plausible scenario in which this very thing could happen. In this newest series of polls, Mr. Kerry continues to nurse an eroding lead that now stands at 264 Electoral College votes to 241 votes for Mr. Bush.

Two states – Arkansas (6 votes) and Florida (27 votes) remain too close to call. Should Mr. Kerry capture Arkansas, home to former President Clinton, who is taking an increasing role in the Kerry campaign, and should Mr. Bush win Florida, which is being flooded with federal aide in the wake of four hurricane strikes and which is governed by the President’s brother, the race would favor Mr. Kerry, 270-268.

However, if two other states, Missouri, which now narrowly favors Mr. Bush, and Minnesota, which now narrowly favors Mr. Kerry, were to flip, we would have a 269-269 tie, and the election would be thrown to the U.S. House of Representatives.

There are lots of other alternate scenarios that are equally plausible. For instance, if Mr. Bush were to capture both Arkansas and Florida, which is likely, but lost either West Virginia or Nevada, the outcome would be the same.

And you thought the 2000 election was fun.

One more thought. With Florida so closely divided, a key to the election may be how the federal (and state) governments lead the way with hurricane relief. The feds are putting on a full court press to get money and materiel where it needs to be to help locals recover, and the state government, under the leadership of presidential brother Jeb, is also laboring on a fast track. The election could come down to whether the lights come back on soon enough and businesses are compensated quickly enough to compensate after the string of disastrous storms.

Beyond the mood of Florida voters, there are elections officials struggling with the sheer difficulty of preparing to conduct a statewide election, a difficult task under good conditions. Florida, after all, is hardly known for its prowess when it comes to election management.

Pollster John Zogby: “Just before the Republican Convention I wrote that the main problem that President George W. Bush faced was that he had to wage a three-front war to win re-election. First, bring his own numbers up. Second, drive Senator John Kerry’s down. And, finally, he had to try to dissuade undecided voters, who generally are not leaning his way, from voting.

“My hat is off to the President. He had a good two weeks and was able to make notable progress on all three fronts. The President managed to raise all three of his key barometric readings – job performance, right direction for the country, and whether or not he deserves to be re-elected.

“But this battle is not over. This is not an eleven-point race – and never really was. My last poll showed the President with a three-point lead nationally and about 241 Electoral votes – less than the 270 needed to win. Mr. Kerry has 264 Electoral voters, but neither candidate has hefty enough leads overall or in many of the battleground states.”