CURSE OF THE ZOGBY.

Noted sometime-maverick pollster John Zogby says the race is John Kerry's to lose:

First, my most recent poll (April 12-15) shows bad re-election numbers for an incumbent President. Senator Kerry is leading 47% to 44% in a two-way race, and the candidates are tied at 45% in the three-way race with Ralph Nader. Significantly, only 44% feel that the country is headed in the right direction and only 43% believe that President Bush deserves to be re-elected - compared with 51% who say it is time for someone new.

In that same poll, Kerry leads by 17 points in the Blue States that voted for Al Gore in 2000, while Bush leads by only 10 points in the Red States that he won four years ago.

Second, there are very few undecided voters for this early in a campaign. Historically, the majority of undecideds break to the challenger against an incumbent. The reasons are not hard to understand: voters have probably made a judgment about the better-known incumbent and are looking for an alternative.

Third, the economy is still the top issue for voters - 30% cite it. While the war in Iraq had been only noted by 11% as the top issue in March, it jumped to 20% in our April poll as a result of bad war news dominating the news agenda. The third issue is the war on terrorism. Among those who cited the economy, Kerry leads the President 54% to 35%. Among those citing the war in Iraq, Kerry's lead is 57% to 36%. This, of course, is balanced by the 64% to 30% margin that the President holds over Kerry on fighting the war on terrorism. These top issues are not likely to go away. And arguably, there is greater and growing intensity on the part of those who oppose and want to defeat Bush.

Zogby himself admits that he likes making risky calls and that they don't always pan out, but this is a pretty strong statement, much stronger than the claim that 2000 was Al Gore's to lose (which I never quite bought). The optimist is me believes pretty much everything Zogby says. The only problem I see is that he says, "The President's problem is further compounded by the fact that he is now at the mercy of situations that are out of his control." I think this is true, but that it's hard to see this as necessarily a problem -- the Bush administration has made patently wrong decisions on everything over which they have had control, which is why Iraq is such a mess, which is why the economy is a joke, which is why people are losing access to health care (affordable or not), which is why global terrorism is up -- the official "terrorism" figures don't include anything that's going on in Iraq. Furthermore, I think we're likely to see an even bigger than usual break of the undecideds (though there are relatively few of them) to the challenger. George Bush has made no secret about what his second term will look like. If you haven't been swayed to his side yet, chances are you won't be by November 2.

The pessimist in me thinks it might not matter because popular opinion is obsolete. Kerry's lead in the blue states in bigger than Bush's lead in the red states, but targeted marketing is the one thing that Karl Rove is objectively good at. The absolute most important thing the Kerry campaign can do is get every possible vote squeezed out of the Florida electorate. Before we even get to the fall, the campaign needs to scrutinize the voter rolls and make damn sure that thousands of likely Kerry voters have not been disenfranchised. And when Election Day rolls around, there are millions of Floridians who didn't vote last time that need to be drawn out. One thing to keep in mind is that polls of "likely voters" are often just polls of "people who voted in the last Presidential election." I would argue that there are a lot of people who are likely to vote this year that didn't in 2000, maybe as much as a 5% bump in turnout. That would amount to about 5,000,000 additional voters, and I can't think of a compelling argument for them voting for Bush -- see also "A Kerry Landslide?" in Washington Monthly.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra ::: 2004:05:10:11:15