Polls Put Chimpy on Edge

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"We know from the history of presidential elections that when a president is polling below 50% going into the election, he usually loses," said Alan I. Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist. "That is true of incumbent office holders in general. The incumbent usually ends up getting the percentage that he is getting in the final polls — that's it."


By that standard, the race today is teetering right on the knife's edge, though perhaps tilting slightly toward Bush after he regained the lead in five separate national polls released over the weekend. More importantly, for the first time since the debates, Bush in three of the latest surveys cracked the 50% level in support — the best news GOP strategists have seen in weeks.


Surveys released Saturday by Newsweek and ABC/Washington Post put Bush's support at 50% among likely voters. On Sunday, Bush reached 52% among likely voters in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, opening an 8-percentage-point advantage over Kerry.


But a survey released over the weekend by Time placed Bush at 48% — as did the Newsweek result among registered voters. And the daily tracking poll by independent pollster John Zogby on Sunday put Bush at 46% with likely voters. Among registered voters, Bush got 49% in the new Gallup Poll.


Bush's approval rating, another key indicator, is still running just below 50% in most polls.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&e=5&u=/latimests/20041018/ts_latimes/pollsputbushontheedge

They just morphed into the polling industry here in the US. They've been outsourced here.

Their kissing cousins run the state-owned media. Now we're on the other side of the Iron Curtain - how does it feel to be told that which you know not to be true as the truth? Soon they'll be playing dirge music when someone dies in DC, before the announcement days later.

There's not a dime's worth of differnce, psychologically speaking, between fanatic right-wing Republicans and Communists.

They think exactly the same way.

...fanatic right-wing Republicans and the Nazi Party of pre-WWII Germany.

Communists tend to nationalize and run industry by the use of government planning commissions. The Soviets used the Five-Year Plan to set very rigid objectives.

Fascists tend to work hand-in-glove with the major corporations while both get rich at the expense of the working classes.

this speaks louder than any poll.
Livingston County is troglodyte conservative territory


Editorial
Livingston County Daily Press Argus
http://www.hometownlife.com/Brighton/News.asp?pageType=Story&StoryID=59997&Section=Editorial&OnlineSection=Editorial&SectionPubDate=10/17/2004


For president, John Kerry is the true conservative

Choosing the president of the United States is, in many ways, the most solemn and important duty a voter has - and it is a choice that should never be taken lightly. Nor should, all things considered, an incumbent president ever be easily turned out of office.

Livingston County is a mostly conservative place and we like to think of ourselves as a mostly conservative newspaper. But think about what that proud word "conservative" means.

Essentially, it means to honor and preserve the values and traditions that have made this nation and our people great. Ronald Reagan was such a conservative. So were Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald Ford and George Romney and Bob Dole.

But what are conservatives to make of an administration which, in less than four short years, turned record federal budget surpluses into record deficits that suck up money needed for private business expansion at home and threaten crippling inflation in years to come?

What are we to make of a president who rushed us into a war for reasons that we now know were false? We are now bogged down in this war with no end in sight and no realistic plan for victory. This war has strained our ancient alliances with many Western nations, and has helped give comfort to our real enemies.

Too often, this president and this administration have behaved with surprising recklessness at home and abroad. And alarmingly, this president never once has been able to admit he has made a single mistake.

That description sounds like a parody of the liberal administration of Lyndon Johnson. But it is in fact what has happened to this country under the stewardship of George W. Bush.

For all these reasons, we endorse U.S. Sen. JOHN KERRY for president. Kerry is, in fact, the conservative choice. The bottom line on Vietnam is that he volunteered, he served his country, he won medals, he was wounded and he could have been killed.

He has since served in the U.S. Senate for 20 years, acting most of that time as a cautious moderate, respected on both sides of the aisle. He builds coalitions and seeks solutions to the kind of problems afflicting everybody.

President Bush prefers to go it alone, or almost alone. This is risky behavior in the terrorist-plagued world in which we now live.

John Kerry would be a better choice to take over the task of moving the war in Iraq to a solution, while redirecting the focus of the war on terror to our real enemies - Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

We need leadership, too, that will help position our nation's economy to compete in this new century, with an eye on the environment, our most precious resource.

The next four years are also expected to bring several new vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court. Our belief is that a President Kerry would be more apt to pick judges the way a president should - based on judicial competence rather than ideology.

Those who knew Kerry in his days as a tough young prosecutor, by the way, laugh at the idea that he wants to coddle criminals.

The bottom line in this election was best expressed by a Republican with a famous name. Ambassador John Eisenhower, son of the president, is endorsing a Democrat for the first time in his life. "The current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance. Senator Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent and concerned."

This newspaper agrees. On Election Day, we urge a vote for John Kerry for president.

Exactly right. I can't think of a single topic on which Bush has acted as a true conservative, and I'm glad there are bright, thoughtful conservatives who see that, too.

But I note the endorsement didn't mention the other area that has the libertarian branch of the right so furious, the Patriot Act.

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"Surveys released Saturday by Newsweek and ABC/Washington Post put Bush's support at 50% among likely voters. On Sunday, Bush reached 52% among likely voters in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, opening an 8-percentage-point advantage over Kerry.

But a survey released over the weekend by Time placed Bush at 48% — as did the Newsweek result among registered voters. And the daily tracking poll by independent pollster John Zogby on Sunday put Bush at 46% with likely voters. Among registered voters, Bush got 49% in the new Gallup Poll."

Likely voters indicates those voters the polling organization believes will vote for their respective candidates. It does not take into account those GOP voters who will either switch to Kerry or will not vote at all. Additionally, it does not take into account the huge number of newly registered voters that are running in the range of 55% to 65% in favor of the Democratic Party. People owning cell-phones as their only phone cannot be reached by pollsters, another area that cannot be measured by current polling methods.

Gallup has once again been caught polling more Republicans than Democrats by a margin reflected by the supposed "lead" they have attributed to Bush. Gallup has consistently given Bush a MUCH higher lead than any of the other polls. As a point of reference, at this time in 2000, Gallup gave Bush a 7% lead over Gore going into Election Day...Gore won the 2000 popular vote in 2000 by 500,000 votes.