Stop Freaking Out
By Andrew Dobbs
Alright, now everyone's got their panties in a wad over the Time and Newsweek polls which say that Bush is going to win in a landslide. Well, I have this from the incomparable Electoral-Vote.com:
Rasmussen has started publishing a 3-day rolling average every day. For Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, (all post-speech), Bush's lead nationally has shrunk to 1.2%. Rasmussen looked at the Time and Newsweek polls we had yesterday and said the samples had too many Republicans in them. When he corrected for this effect, he concluded that the Time and Newsweek data might support the conclusion of a 3% Bush lead, not more. This observation is noteworthy because it is relatively rare when one pollster says that his colleagues blew it.
He also goes on to say that Rasmussen polled people on their opinions of Zell Miller, Karl Rove, Bill Frist, Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert. Distressingly enough, the only one that more than half of America has any opinion of is Zell Miller, easily the least powerful of the 5. I mean, Tom DeLay is probably the second most powerful man in America and a majority of people don't know who he is? Jesus people- wake up! Anyways, the good news is of the people intelligent enough to y'know read and stuff and who know who the other four are tend to dislike all of them. Of the 5 the only one who didn't have more negatives than positives was Hastert who has the same number of dislikes as likes. So the good new is that the "political class"- the people who read and tend to educate their peers about politics are telling them that the GOP is f**ked up.
Anyways, stop freaking out, Bush picked up a little bit of ground but Time and Newsweek were counting way too many Republicans. Kerry works best when he's down so I wouldn't start stocking up water in the bomb shelter or planning a 4 year trip to Canada quite yet.
Posted by Andrew Dobbs at September 6, 2004 03:17 AM
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It's still two months to the election, folks. I suggest we settle down! In the end, all of the negatives are associated with Bush - most people still believe the war was a mistake and that the country is headed in the wrong direction. If the election is a referendum on the President's performance in his first term, he'll be headed back to Crawford. And, if the country is so evenly divided with so few swing voters, how is it possible that Bush picked up a 13 point lead in less than a week? Makes no sense.
