George Bush 11 Point Lead (Time), 11 Point Lead (Newsweek)

Friday, Sep. 03, 2004

New York: For the first time since the Presidential race became a two person contest last spring, there is a clear leader, the latest TIME poll shows. If the 2004 election for President were held today, 52% of likely voters surveyed would vote for President George W. Bush, 41% would vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry, and 3% would vote for Ralph Nader, according to a new TIME poll conducted from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2. Poll results are available on TIME.com and will appear in the upcoming issue of TIME magazine, on newsstands Monday, Sept. 6.

Time Magazine Online Article

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush emerged from the Republican National Convention with an 11-point lead over Democrat John Kerry, according to a Newsweek poll released on Saturday, the second straight survey showing him ahead by double digits.

The Newsweek poll of 1,008 adults conducted on Thursday and Friday showed Bush leading Kerry by 52 percent to 41 percent among registered voters, with independent Ralph Nader at 3 percent. The survey had a 4-point margin of error.

Newsweek Poll

Go ahead, start your crying.

This is the most striking reason on why a campaign of "Anybody But Bush" will not prevail. John Kerry cannot define himself and is being defined by his opponents. Despite 40% or more of the country having no love for to despising G.W. he can and will win.

Last night when John Kerry had his midnight rally it was so poorly formed, the speech so rambling and incoherent that MSNBC, FOX and CNN all cut out of it at one point or another for commentary or commercials and then came back. To give the gist of what Kerry said he's tired of being attacked, called unfit... blah blah blah. Then compared his record in Vietnam, yes here we go with Vietnam again, to Dick Cheney receiving 5 deferments (3 for undergrad, 1 for grad school, 1 for having a pregnant wife.) . Sorry Senator, the Vice President went out of his way to honor your service in Vietnam and only questioned your Senate votes.

Jobs are bad? Oh yeah, that's why unemployment is at 5.4% now. Lower than Clinton's re-election year at this point. People are faced with high health care prices? Could it be that malpractice insurance rates for some specialties like OB-GYN are over a million a year because of the natural birth/c-section brain damage trial your running mate won when he was a trial lawyer?

Senator Kerry has only himself to blame for this. They have been around too many people for too long that were all convinced that ABB would carry them into the White House. He has run away from every bit of his public record except.... Vietnam. When attacked on his Senate record "Why I served two tours! How dare they question my fitness to lead!" never addressing the point, just bringing up.... Vietnam.

I would still love one reporter to grab hold of that statement "I served two tours." and tell me and the rest of the American public how two tours results in 4 months in Vietnam when one tour was one year.

Landslide is coming, feel the rumble, get ready to ride the wave. We're getting 4 more years.

Here's part of Kerry's speech last night for those who want more thasn PAD's summation:

"The vice president called me unfit for office last night," Kerry told thousands of supporters who waited in the darkness to see him in Ohio. "I'm going to leave it to you to decide whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty."

Although Kerry's late-night rally in Springfield had been planned for several days, the strong push-back on his military record didn't come together until Thursday. A Kerry aide said the candidate's tipping point came Thursday morning, when he saw newspaper headlines saying Cheney had called him "unfit" for office. "That did it for him," the aide said. "That word 'unfit' means something to a veteran."

Kerry offered up his own test for fitness to serve -- and he made it clear that he thinks Bush and Cheney fail it. "Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this country. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting 45 million Americans go without healthcare for four years makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting the Saudi royal family control the price of oil for Americans makes you unfit to lead this country. Handing out billions of dollars in contracts without a bid to Halliburton while you're still on their payroll makes you unfit to lead this country.

"That, my friends, is the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney, and that only begins to scratch the surface. This president has misled American workers and misled the American people."

11 POINT LEAD!

It's a nice bounce. The sad thing about bounces is they always come back down.

I'm sorry, is it election day yet? Then I don't care what some poll said, and neither should you.

It was done during the convention. Final polling day was September 2nd.

[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark'] 11 POINT LEAD! [/quote]
I think we need a hi five smiley. I suppose the will have to do.



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That's funny, PAD. Here's another poll taken during the same time:

Friday September 03, 2004--For the second straight day, the Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll shows President George W. Bush with 49% of the vote and Senator John Kerry with 45%. The Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll is updated daily by noon Eastern

Bush is enjoying a modest Convention bounce. Today marks the first time since March 19 that he has held a 4-point lead on consecutive days. The President's Job Approval is at its highest level since April and voters now view him a bit more favorably than John Kerry. Data provided to Premium Members shows that in the key Battleground States, perceptions of the President improved each day of the Convention.

By way of comparison, Kerry was ahead by 3-points on the morning following his Acceptance Speech in Boston

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm

So again, I ask you, PAD. What do these polls mean? Nothing. What matters is Nov. 2.

In other words, Kerry has 2 month to turn around what has been a lackluster campaign. I hope he does, I'd like to see, I don't know, an actual debate in this country.

Sure will be nice when Kerry takes a stand on something relevant so that can actually happen.

I didn't know that every voter votes in every poll on every magazine and news website.

Wow.

[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']It was done during the convention. Final polling day was September 2nd.[/quote]

That's bloody obvious and I'd say Time is damn close to that 4 point margin of error, either that or I guess my parents are right, Time is right leaning or Conservative rather but I never thought that. That or most of it's readers are Conservative.

Congratulations guys! Hopefully for you only Time readers will be allowed to vote!

I hope you know something about polling....

They just don't poll Time readers or Newsweek readers for the Time and Newsweek polls. They're samples out of the general population. Sorry to bend your umbrella.

That might be an important note to cite in your initial post. I do know a little about polling: I know that polls can employ any number of methods to determine the polling sample. One of those would be a sample of convenience. It would be very convenient for Time to mail out a survey to it's subscriber base. If that is not the method they used, you might want to let others know that this is the case. There are no "universal rules for polling." Any poll worth a shit would disclose the method used for sampling, and, by extension of that, anyone who wants to be taken seriously when citing data gathered by polling would do the same. Maybe you've learned something new about polling.

[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']This is the most striking reason on why a campaign of "Anybody But Bush" will not prevail.
[/quote]

Maybe not, but just as well, that Republican convention looked like it was themed "Anybody but Kerry." At least the Democrats' convention outlined a positive agenda for America. The Republicans' gathering in New York can be characterized as nothing less than a John Kerry hate-fest. And the ironic thing is that the Repubs. have been criticizing the Dems. for months that they are filled with "rage and hatred." They even had a video montage on the Bush web site of clips from "angry Democrats." What do you suppose are the odds that they will be adding Zell Miller to that collection?

Secondly, it's amazing how easily people will buy into the simplistic arguments about taxes that Bush is spewing. The question remains, why aren't the people at the top being asked to make sacrifices? We're a country at war, after all, as Bush often reminds us. Instead, American manufacturing workers are literally packing up their equipment to ship their job overseas. It's the people at the middle to the bottom of the ladder who are paying the price tag for these enormous no-bid contracts over in Iraq.

I generally share Bush's realist view of world affairs, but after he finally had his big unveiling of his agenda for the next 4 years, I must say I didn't agree with any of his proposals 4 years ago and still cannot bring myself to vote for him- especially after that insult of a convention..

[quote name='twolvesfan21']

Secondly, it's amazing how easily people will buy into the simplistic arguments about taxes that Bush is spewing. The question remains, why aren't the people at the top being asked to make sacrifices? We're a country at war, after all, as Bush often reminds us. Instead, American manufacturing workers are literally packing up their equipment to ship their job overseas. It's the people at the middle to the bottom of the ladder who are paying the price tag for these enormous no-bid contracts over in Iraq.
[/quote]

Because they still pay an insanely disproportionate amount of taxes in the U.S.? Perhaps we should ask why 99% of the people get off not doing so?

I still want to know why John Kerry didn't voluntarily pay the pre-Bush tax rate last year despite it being so easy to do in Mass. Why didn't he make the sacrifice? Oh right, because in this country we still believe in at least appearing to spread the burdens and benefits of society equally.

[quote name='kev']
Because they still pay an insanely disproportionate amount of taxes in the U.S.? Perhaps we should ask why 99% of the people get off not doing so?

I still want to know why John Kerry didn't voluntarily pay the pre-Bush tax rate last year despite it being so easy to do in Mass. Why didn't he make the sacrifice? Oh right, because in this country we still believe in at least appearing to spread the burdens and benefits of society equally.[/quote]


The ones truly "getting off not paying taxes" are the few thousand individuals in the top tax bracket who find loopholes by which to significantly reduce their tax burden. Then you've got the corporations who dodge taxes by setting up mailboxes in Bermuda. Bush's response? "People will always find a way around paying their taxes." You combine this with the fact that he dropped the rule used by previous presidents that all tax cuts be offset by revenue or spending cuts elsewhere in the budget, and we've got a mess on our hands. Record deficits, out of control spending on a broad array of budget items by a so-called "conservative" president. Now we're looking at tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% that we can't pay for, an administration that tacitly approves of tax dodging/evasion, and now the Repubs. are saying let's dump the IRS and institute a national sales tax? After four more years of this kind of thinking, it will take nothing short of an act of God to clean up the government's books.

And the wealthy pay an "insanely" disproportionate share of taxes relative to what? If you look at it, the percentage of their tax burden is pretty close to their percentage share of total US income. The correlation between those statistics hasn't wavered much at all in the past 2 decades, either. Would you rather raise taxes on an unemployed blue-collar family who can barely make ends meet, or would you rather ask Joe Schmo rich person to wait another year before buying his new Feadship yacht?

Here's an update for you on the polls. This is from the site of an international polling firm. I would venture a guess that they know more about polling than me or PAD. Here's the article I'm quoting:
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=859

"Two new polls came out immediately after mine (as of this writing) by the nation's leading weekly news magazines. Both Time's 52% to 41% lead among likely voters and Newsweek's 54% to 43% lead among registered voters give the President a healthy 11 point lead. I have not yet been able to get the details of Time's methodology but I have checked out Newsweek's poll. Their sample of registered voters includes 38% Republican, 31% Democrat and 31% Independent voters. If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000. While party identification can indeed change within the electorate, there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that Democrats will only represent 31% of the total vote this year. In fact, other competitors have gone in the opposite direction. The Los Angeles Times released a poll in June of this year with 38% Democrats and only 25% Republicans. And Gallup's party identification figures have been all over the place."

Enjoy those 11 points! Looks like they may not hold up in the actual election.