-------- Original Message --------
From: "Michael Givel" <mgivel@ea
Subject: The Polls Come Back to Earth


http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090804W.shtml
The Polls Come Back to Earth
t r u t h o u t | Staff Report

Tuesday 07 September 2004

It has been a wild week for numbers. Immediately after the Republican
Convention, Time and Newsweek released poll numbers indicating a significant
bounce for George W. Bush, and an 11 point lead over John Kerry. A few days
go by, however, and the air appears to have been let out of the tires.

The new Rasmussen poll has the two Presidential candidates tied 47.3% to
47.3%. This leads to an inescapable conclusion: If all these numbers are
correct - Time, Newsweek and Rasmussen - then Mr. Bush has suffered an
historic cratering in his poll numbers within 100 hours of the close of his
party's convention.

But perhaps the ballyhooed post-convention lead enjoyed by Bush never
existed at all. Pollster John Zogby says, "I have Mr. Bush leading by 2
points in the simple head-to-head match up - 46% to 44%. Add in the other
minor candidates and it becomes a 3 point advantage for the President - 46%
to 43%...it simply is not an 11 point race. It just isn't."

It should be noted that Rasmussen provided the core data for both the
TIME and Newsweek polls. Their independent interpretation of the very same
data produced dramatically different conclusions than those reached by TIME
and Newsweek.

The 'Bush bounce' after the convention has either disappeared
completely, or never existed at all. Neither bodes well for the incumbent.
Gallup, which has on many occasions appeared to be working as a PR arm of
the Bush election campaign, paints an interesting political perspective:
"Bush's two-point convention bounce is one of the smallest registered in
Gallup polling history, along with Hubert Humphrey's two-point bounce
following the 1968 Democratic convention, George McGovern's zero-point
bounce following the 1972 Democratic convention, and Kerry's "negative
bounce" of one point among registered voters earlier this year. Bush's
bounce is the smallest an incumbent president has received."