Wouldn't It Be Odd if Bush WASN'T A Few Points Ahead in Polls??

Maybe someone who knows how polls are conducted could answer this for me. There are these mit full of "red to the core" states were Bush is mopping the floor with Kerry---not even a semi-close race. We have a couple blue states where we have comfortable leads but not like these core red states. Then there is the list of our blue states where we are fighting hand to hand combat to retain. Therefore, when they take these "nation-wide polls" wouldn't it seem by sheer numbers that Bush would at least have a 4-5 point lead. That, of course, does not translate into having the votes where they count. Sooooo, if we have polls that have these two dead even (Zogby, Rass, NYTimes, etc.) and you factor this in, wouldn't it mean Bush is actually in not too good a shape????

If Bush has 90% in Alabama and Kerry has 90% in New York and we assume the US is only made up of Alabama and New York, then a "national" poll would show a tie. However, Kerry is actually ahead because 1) New York has more people and 2) New York carries more electoral votes.

The key, in my opinion, is to see where Bush polls high numbers and weigh those numbers to the national poll... in short, if he polls very high in the Dakotas, Mississippi, Alabama, etc., that would skew a national poll higher for Bush....

I hope I am making some sense.

New York has more people so Kerry would be well ahead in the national polls under your scenario. I think what the original poster meant was if Alabama was Bush by 90%, and New York was Kerry by 51%. Given that scenario, Kerry would win the election by a good deal of electoral votes but Bush would win the popular vote. Well of course we all know this can happen, it happened in 2000. We definitely should be paying more attention to the electoral college.

3% or under likely indicates Kerry win... 5% or over likely indicates Bush win.

the number of newly registered Democrats is a BIG DEAL

Those votes are not counted in the polls, and the repugs are very concerned about this

They know if there is a large voter turnout they lose