Here is the way to look at this poll IMO. This poll was conducted over a 10-day period starting on October 20th, which definitely does not cover the full court press that the Bush team has made there down the stretch. Secondly the article states that they have attempted to add new registrations for the first time in their poll. Bush was ahead by 7% in their last poll, but it was also tied in the one before that. So that would tell me that Bush definitely has a lead in the more traditional voting numbers, so the Kerry campaign is totally hinging on a great turnout by these first time voters to have any chance at all. And the forecast looks like rain in Cleveland and elsewhere in Ohio on Tuesday, so that could impact these first time voters. Finally, I still don't think any poll is able to reflect the awesome GOTV effort that the Bush campaign has in place, which was completely non-existent in 2000.
The missing piece, which is the last sentence in the article, is that the response rate was ONLY 25%! They made no attempt to reconcile the non-respondents- are they the same as the respondents. Basically all this very poorly done survey tells us is that 25% are the most motivated voters, and among them it's 50/50.
The other 75% are either: split, favor Bush, or favor Kerry. No other conclusions can be made.
Basically my 9 year old daughter could have saved them the time, effort, and money by telling them the same thing.