|
|
|
Become a
Paid Mullings Subscriber!
(To join the FREE mailing list or to unsubscribe Click Here)
Orange Ya' Gonna Vote?
Rich Galen Monday October 25, 2004
From the AIPAC National Summit
Hollywood, Florida
We are now at single digits to the election which, as my friend and Fox News sparring partner, Bob Beckel pointed out the other day, has been going on since March when Senator Kerry became the Democratic nominee.
That means this will have been an eight-month general election campaign. And that's assuming (as I do) that this will all be over on election day or sometime during the morning hours immediately following.
My working theory is this: One of the two candidates will win enough states by a large enough margin so that the political pressures to call off the legal dogs will overcome the natural desire of lawyers to file paperwork and the natural desire of clerks of court to accept them, stamp them, accept the required filing fees, issue receipts and inform the media who has filed what against whom.
My further theory based upon the intractable polling data which shows President Bush with a stubborn four-point-just-outside-the-margin-of-error lead which Senator Kerry has not been able to budge.
State-by-state polls are, of course, more important at this stage, but it is difficult to see how the national numbers and the numbers in large states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida can be terribly different.
What the pollsters are doing is trying to deign who is going to vote and for whom they are going to vote. There is nothing new in this. Internal polling by major campaigns and national committees often have results which are computed against potential turn-out models. It is not unusual to see a poll computed at 45% turnout; 50% turnout, and 55% turnout.
It is easier to do this in non-Presidential years in state-wide and Congressional district-level races because there are ample historical turnout data the those data can be dissected without being tainted by the mega-political operations of a hotly contested Presidential race.
The Harris survey folks released a poll last week which had two results depending upon which model of "likely voters" they used. In one result the President had an eight-point lead over Senator Kerry, in the other the President's lead shrunk to two points. Note, please that in neither case did Senator Kerry lead.
In the latest Harris poll, by the way, the President's Job Approval rating has improved to 51-49 (up from 45-54 last month) which is well within the "re-electable" range.
A poll released yesterday by the South Florida (ne� Ft. Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel has Kerry leading Bush here by one point - 48-47 - but also points to a large lead by Kerry among younger voters (53-44) and a huge 86-4 lead among Black voters. Neither of those two groups have been high-turnout portions of the population and in the primary elections here last month Black turnout fell behind expectations by about a third.
Getting new people registered is one thing. Getting them to vote is something else again. There is a reason that these people weren't registered in the first place.
However, just below the poll story in the Sun-Sentinel was a piece headed, "More Blacks Give GOP a Closer Look," which took a look at the potential shift of middle-class African-Americans away from their traditional Democratic moorings which cannot be good news for the Kerry campaign here.
In that poll Bush led in all sections of Florida other than the south, and led among Hispanic voters 58-40.
Just to review the bidding, in 2002 the Democratic National Committee was going to punish Jeb Bush - who was running for re-election - for the 2000 results by committing millions of dollars to his defeat. Bush won so easily that I was about the only person from Washington to show up on election night, everyone else having found more interesting venues to cover.
I came to Miami because, as I told one national reporter, "When Mullings buys a ticket, that's where Mullings goes."
I voted on Saturday in the People's Republic of Alexandria. Drove the Skippy-scooter right up to the early voting location, walked in and voted for George W. Bush. But then, no one has ever considered me to be undecided. About almost anything.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the two Sun-Sentinel stories plus Two! Mullfotos and a fairly disturbing Catchy Caption of the Day.
--END --
Copyright © 2004 Richard A. Galen
Current Issue |
Secret Decoder
Ring | Past
Issues | Email
Rich | Rich
Who?
Copyright �2002 Richard
A. Galen | Site design by Campaign
Solutions. | |
|
� 
