Race for President Falls Back into Dead Heat, New Zogby ....

[Nicholas_J]

Race for President Falls Back into Dead Heat, New Zogby Interactive Presidential Battleground Poll Reveals



The race for President of the United States continued to tighten during the last two weeks, as President Bush continued his long, hard slog back toward parity with Democratic challenger John Kerry, throwing the race into a virtual dead heat, the latest package of polls by Zogby Interactive shows.

Based on individual polls conducted simultaneously Sept. 13-17 in 20 battleground states, neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Kerry holds a clear-cut lead in enough states to win the Electoral College votes required to capture the White House...

Two states – Arkansas (6 votes) and Florida (27 votes) remain too close to call. Should Mr. Kerry capture Arkansas, home to former President Clinton, who is taking an increasing role in the Kerry campaign, and should Mr. Bush win Florida, which is being flooded with federal aide in the wake of four hurricane strikes and which is governed by the President’s brother, the race would favor Mr. Kerry, 270-268.




http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=868

In this poll (not the interactive poll) Zogby has Kerry with 264 Electoral Votes, and Bush with 241, as indicated by Zogby's own state polls. (Go to the site and check out the tables, Zogby has had Kerry leading in the electoral college consistantly since may, though he is down considerab;y from his high point, he is still well enough ahead of Bush to win the election under agood number of possible scenarios looked at by Zogby

[Erika]

1. It's A Tight Race

But Bush has failed miserably in the his declared Iraqi war, the economy, and trust among the American people.

[Leilani]

2. Ha! Maybe Wes Clark would have been a good Veep choice?

Considering that he might have helped in Arkansas?

And now that the race has turned to Iraq & terrorism, Wes Clark is a major architect of Kerry s new message re:Iraq.

According to Ron Brownstein, Kerry crafted his speech at NYU based on Wes Clark & Richard Clarke s theory of Iraq. That the war on terror was in Afghanistan & bin Laden, not in Iraq. And that the war in Iraq has made us LESS safe.

And with the new Clinton advisors on board, the message has changed, & the strategy has changed. Bob Shrum & his happy, smiley face campaign has been put aside, in favor of a more agressive approach to take Bush on directly.

ITS ABOUT THE WAR, STUPID!

Go Kerry!

The tide has turned...Kerry is fighting, & he will win this thing.

[Nicholas_J]

3. You could say similar things about Gephardt.

If he had been nominated, he would have been attacking the Swift Boat Veterans stories within 24 hours of the release of their advertisements the same way he picked apart Dean.

Gephart would have done the traditional VP running mate job of attacking the hell out of the opposition.

Not to regret the selection of Edwards, but that is leaving Kerry to do the job of attack dog for hmself, whhich is something uprecedented, and sometimes backfires as it is the presideential candidate themselves who is involved in negative attack behavior.

But then again, this election is of such a different nature, that perhaps Kerry has to bee seens as being a person who is capable of being extremely agressive in his beliefs, so it may turn out not to be harmul this time around.

I know that the Bush people must be sweating over this one, as Kerry got rousing ovations today in the most conservative big city in Florida, had standing room only in the auditorium. Bush himself got a lukewarm reception at the U.N. and Kofi Annan turned his back on Bush after shaking his hand and leading him from the podium. Annans statements about the illegality of the war in Iraq, and the poor reception Bush got today makes it clear that the U.S. will get no international aid while Bush is president. Putins sttements in Pravda that the U.S. will be better off if John Kerry is elected and that the War in Iraq will go better if Kerry is elected is another shot across the bow indicating that Russia will come to the aid of the U.S. only if Kerry is elected. Other indications are the British Parliament is waiting before making more commitments in Iraq until they see who is elected:

Bush is the fly in Blair's ointment

Kerry may not be the ideal bedfellow for Labour, says Kamal Ahmed, but he would be a better bet than Dubya

Sunday March 7, 2004
The Observer

Ten days ago, at Number 10 Downing Street, a reception was held for Ministers and 'progressive thinkers'. Professor Anthony Giddens, Tony Blair's Third Way mentor, was asked to say a few words.
He spoke about the need for social democrats to come together and discover a popular language to defeat the neo-conservative strand of American thinking that had come to dominate the White House. 'Maybe we could call ourselves the neo-progs,' he joked. And then, in a throw-away line, he said what a lot of people in Downing Street and particularly the Prime Minister's inner circle feel about events across the Atlantic. 'We need to get George Bush out of the White House.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1163984,00.html

There are lots of articles that indicate that the House of Commosn is just leaving a lot of stuff undone because they are waiting to see the results of the elections and for the most part hoping that the winner will be Kerry. On October 1st, the British trrops will be reduced by one third because of troop rotations and there are not enough troops left to replace everyone being moved out, and the Brits just cant extend the stay. Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, the Brits are having a lot of problems attracting people into the military and so their troop streegth is down

[Leilani]

4. I agree that Gephart would have been on the offensive

& played a much more traditional role as Veep attack dog. He might have also made some difference with Midwest voters & rural vote.

I commented on Clark because of Arkansas becoming an important state, & also because of the recent change in strategy on the Kerry Campaign to make Iraq the central issue, & the fact that Clark is now back in the campaign sinec the Clinton people came aboard.

I guess we will find out when the race is finished & the internals are examined, & the post-mortems are written, regardless of the winner.

One thing is for sure, however, Bob Shrum should be put out to pasture.

[Lexingtonian]

5. and it's only going to get better....

The amusing part is that W still has 1-2% to fall to hit his national baseline of 44-45%, which he should hit around, oh, September 30 or early October given his usual rate of fall of nearly 3% a month- Iraq just does that to him. And Kerry's numbers are rising again. Don't forget that a 45-45 split in polling is just about a winning hand for Kerry, either....

Zogby has a problem result or two in every 'battleground state' polling. Last month it was clearly Tennessee, this month it's Arkansas. (I'd add Colorado, but other polls seem to imply that the Salazar brothers are getting a couple of of percent new Democratic and Undecided voters into the Colorado electorate. That would pretty much have to be those long inactive Hispanic voters in southern Colorado that Democrats have tried to get voting for a lot of years.)

Bush only needs to lose one or two percentage points for Kerry to win Nevada, Ohio is more complicated but things are close to the same, and Kerry has about as much of a lead as can be gotten by a major party candidate in New Hampshire this year. And Florida is not going to be as close as people hope/fear this year. I'd say it's Kerry's to lose, too.

So Kerry can very be looking pretty plausible as next President by the time the first 'debate' happens.

[Sannum]

6. sigh

It has always been a dead heat.