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[bryant]

Your article of the day is from Fox News, and it says that Bush is leading Kerry by 2% in the polls.

"Um, how is this good news for Kerry?"

The key paragraphs are paragraphs two and three, which read:

These new poll results show a slight dip in polling conducted Wednesday and Thursday night when Bush topped Kerry by 50 percent to 45 percent.

Polling was conducted Thursday and Friday evenings, so about half of those interviewed would have had the opportunity to hear reports of a new tape from Usama bin Laden.

So: the tape hasn't helped Bush, which is not any great surprise, because the tape is a big fat reminder that Osama is still out there.

Now, that poll is from last week. You can get the current tracking polls here, and Fox News is right at the top of the page. There's been an additional Fox News polling cycle since that article was written, and it shows Kerry up by 47% to 46% among likely voters. This is a big fat swing over to Kerry; as predicted, the undecideds are breaking his way.

Comments

[tavella.livejournal.com]

At this point, it feels like we are looking at nothing and trying to get meaning from it. That basically it's a dead heat and all the 'momentum' either way is just polling noise, y'know? Drives me crazy... look at the Zogby battleground poll for Michigan, in the last week it's swung as far as +10 Kerry and +2 Bush. Did that many people actually change their minds back and forth this week? I have trouble believing it!

[multiplexer.livejournal.com]

For Michigan, it depends on where in the state you poll. If the polls were taken at even two slightly different locations (within 10 miles, say) you'll get incredibly different results.

If you poll in Detroit, the Detroit Suburbs, Ann Arbor, Lansing, and Kalamazoo, you'll get a huge bump for Kerry. Detroit is an adamantly Democratic city in the middle of the UAW heartlands.

If you poll in Grand Rapids, Cadillac, Traverse City, down toward Battle Creek, in central Michigan or northern Michigan, you'll get a huge positive poll for Bush, because, for some reasons, western Michigan is a huge evangelical enclave. It's also the home of the Michigan Militia, so not only fanatically Christian, but fanatically Christian with guns.

Michigan is going for Kerry. The UAW will get most of their members to vote, and Detroit will have a half decent turn out. The only way to keep Michigan from going to Kerry is to nuke the state.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I hope so! I think I need to swear off the political blogs and just do phonebanking lest I drive myself crazy...

[multiplexer.livejournal.com]

To put it a simpler way:

300,000 Arabs, most of them Lebanese, live in Dearborn and Detroit. In the last three years, they have been systematically harassed. In 2000, they went for Bush. They are not going for Bush this year.