Finally, America wakes up. Kerry 48% Bush 41%

May 15, 2006--A polling rematch of the 2004 Presidential Election shows that John Kerry leads George W. Bush 48% to 41% (see crosstabs). In the real election, Kerry never held a lead that big in any of the nightly polls we conducted from January 2 through Election Day.

This latest poll is another indication of how much support has fallen for the President since his re-election. The number of voters who call themselves Republicans is also down since Election Day 2004.

President Bush is still trusted by a few more voters than Kerry on the National Security issue. However, the President's advantage is much smaller than it was during the election season--44% now trust the President more while 41% opt for Kerry.

A separate survey found that just 30% of Americans give the President good or excellent marks for handling the situation in Iraq.

Kerry has a narrow edge on economic issues--45% to 40%.



http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/May%20Dailies/Bush%20Kerry.htm

I guess I don't understand why so many people had a negative reaction to Kerry. People keep bringing up the "he didn't seem in touch with normal people - windsurfing and all" but to me that's superfluous and unimportant. In the debates, it was abundantly clear who should have been president.

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I watched the livestream of the Emerson College commencement speech yesterday. Emerson is a Boston liberal arts college. Kerry was incredibly connected with the kids - making jokes to lighten some stronger comments. The kids were clearly engaged laughing and applauding - and Kerry was clearly responding to their responses.

The Republicans, then the media used windsurfing - which was an athletic pastime, that Bush could not have succeeded at, that Kerry did twice in 2003 and twice in 2004.

I assume that, if magically, an election was in the future, the Kerry numbers would be higher as the large number of undecided were forced to chose. Additionally, some of the Bush people here mwy be those unwilling to accept they made a big mistake.

Kerry's failings were that he couldn't seem to connect with Farmer Brown and Security Mom Joan.

And, to be honest, I'm not quite sure if he could connect with them or not since his campaign decided to pretty much conceded the South and mid-West - places where there are lots of rural voters - to Bush.

I'll never forgive his campaign for that. My state was ignored - completely - and it is very, very purple (we have a Dem governor and Dem state house).

I like Howard Dean's 50 state strategy but didn't you see those snarky remarks by Begala about it? They still haven't learned.

Kerry has accepted full responsibility for his campaign, but the Party big shots need to acknowledge that many of the problems in Kerry's campaign were systemic, and we'll see them to continue to pop up election after election until there are changes made.

I just don't how this happened considering our past two Democratic presidents were from the South and the South/mid-West, respectively.

I also agree with Dean's 50-state strategy. We have to build the infrastructure WITHIN the state so that we can afford to go out and talk WITH (not AT) our neighbors about Democratic policies. The South and the mid-West are particularly leary of "outsiders" and it's difficult for, well, the classic "New England Liberal" to get a foodhold in these places UNLESS the infrastructure is there to support them.

The REAL problem is that BushInc rigged machines to give himself more votes.

shows his biggest margins are in the blue collar towns like Worcester. He has always had a huge amount of support from police and fireman.

With the lack of media support, Kerry HAD to strategically spend a lot of time in the swing states. The strategy came close to winning - and without suppresion in Ohio likely would have worked. I would have loved Kerry to come to NJ, it would have been fun to see him. But NJ wasn't really in contention.

If you were campaign manager, where would you have omitted appearances, to put them in Tennessee? There was no swing state where he was doing so well that an appearance cancelled wouldn't have hurt. Kerry and everyone in his and Teresa's families had as many appearances as feasible.

I do think that having a healthy local party helps and Kerry has been helping on that since the election. It really would have helped if the party hadn't let the local parties fall apart in the 90s and early 2000s. Dean has a tough job to fix this.

Just proves the Democrats did not do the job they should have last time out. I see it as a call to arms to get our message out EARLY and STRONG, make sure EVERY vote will be accurate and recorded, and choose a messenger that can DELIVER the message AND the goods!

TC

The NYT reported on a bogus poll that had people answer who was "favorable", and even had an undecided option which greatly skewed the poll against anyone with presidential aspirations. All the rage was that * was at 29 and Kerry at 26, not mentioning that Kerry had a big undecided number, showing that people were looking ahead at '08 which is truly the unknown. Even McCain didn't fair that well in this poll. Yet it was ALL over blogs and cable proving that Kerry wouldn't have won.

Thanks for showing the REAL poll, that people aren't THAT dumb (well, 41% are, but we'll probably never get them).

Many of the Republicans that say they disapprove of Bush would still vote for him again against a Dem in that hypothetical and will definitely vote for a repub. for congress. They are idiots to the core.

That kinda sucks for our guy.

don't really paint an accurate election picture. I have a feeling that many Americans will have no problem voting republican even though they disapprove of the job pugs have done. Public discourse and rationale have been polluted by smears, polarization, and a mentality that puts party over country or even self interest.

With low approvals, it will be even more important for pugs to cultivate polarization. It will be ugly. On the positive side, while pugs may not vote for dems...they may not vote at all. For this reason, we'll also see some bedrock conservative issue come up at the polls too...gay marriage, flag burning, immigration...who knows.

Going by the 2004 playbook then but with the volume turned up: extreme polarization combined with some ghastly issue that gets RWrs to the polls.

Republican-leaning - they have Bush with a 39% approval rating, which is low for them. People who say Kerry should be doing better aren't taking into account the stigma that comes with being branded the "loser" in a national election. Truly, this shows you how badly Bush is doing.

end up voting no.

For example, assume that you are far to the left, it's 1996 and you don't like some of the more conservative things, such as welfare reform that Bill Clinton pushed. You are polled on whether you approve or dissaprove of Clinton. Given that these things are from the assumption things you really disaprove of you say "dissaprove". (If this doesn't work try Carter, and you want Kennedy to win his challange) Now, you are faced with Clinton vs Dole. It's a no brainer, you vote for Clinton.

Some of the people Bush lost recently are the rock bed conservatives on the issue of immigration and the spying issue. Although Senator Kerry agrees with them on the rule of law, and the constitution meaning something, they correctly see Kerry as a Democrat and a liberal. These are people who would go to a third party but not a Democrat.

WHAT'S THE POINT REALLY, the ratfucker got re-elected by every crooked means possible,

they likely did massive data mining that was able to hyper focus their mailing lists to better target and ping likely conservative voters and make sure they got off their dead asses and vote

It's likely they have enough data collected to do the same this November maybe that why Rove is supremely confident of the November outcome he just needs to shock America into boosting Bush's poll numbers so America doesn't wake up in November and ask how the fuck the GOP held both houses with Bush at 20% in the polls

There was a NYT article near the election that spoke of how Bush used modern marketing techniques to target likely Bush voters - using information like the type of car driven etc. The article had no concern about this.

After the election, someone on the John Kerry group posted a link to a Commerce committee hearing later in the day on the use of personal data. Midway through the reasonably boring meeting, Kerry came in having been at another committee's meeting. First, he grilled all the data aggregators on the use of the compiled data on individuals. Asking them whether, when a person signed a form to get a loan he really intended to be giving away information that defined his whole life.

As Kerry's turn was ending, he asked, quite casually, whether they ever gave data to political candidates. The Choicepoint guy, said "their ususal customer" was insurance companies. Kerry cut him off asking if they ever. The guy was clearly squirming and all the Senators, Democratic and Republicans jumped on this question.

As to your contention - you may be right. Consider they could easily use the call detail to organize their telephone calling to call people when they are usually home. May not sound like much, but if you've done telephone bank calling, remember what % of the people you actually got.

he described it's surgical knife like accuracy pulling every last evangelical voter possible out of the wood work to vote. He finished the post with, 'are you scared yet' implying how effective the GOP was at getting their voters to the polls no matter how low in the polls they might be.

With the us of the huge NSA computer banks and strong arming(or paying them throughvery lucrative no-bid contracts) corporations you could collect alot of very reliable data. And Karl Rove is all about data. Bush makes fun of him for staying up late and going over spread sheets into the dead of night.

After all that has happened, we still get this result? :wtf:

You get 54 - 46. Some of that missing 11% won't vote, will vote for third parties or may be lefties still mad Kerry lost - who if there were a real election would. There might also be people who really don't know what they would do.

The result is actually quite different under almost any reasonable assumption.

but Kerry should be above 51%.

sadly.


Bush has 29% approval. yet, people who hate bush, don't like Kerry either. We need a better candidate and message next time.