June 30, 2004
DON'T TELL E.J.:
Poll shows Bush leads widening in Arizona (UPI, 6/30/04)
In Arizona, U.S. President George W. Bush's lead over Sen. John F. Kerry has widened to 12 points, according to the latest KAET-TV/Channel 8 poll.Bush leads Kerry 47 percent to 35 percent in the latest statewide sampling of registered voters while liberal independent Ralph Nader polled at just 2 percent, well behind the 15 percent of respondents who said they were still undecided.
Until recently, Arizona had been seen as a clear swing state in November's presidential election...
There's no such thing as a Red swing state--the battleground is formerly Blue. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 30, 2004 5:30 PM
Polls are all over the place and there are pollsters predicting an easy Kerry win. Then there are polls like this showing Bush doing ok. Time to take a deep breath and check back in September.
Posted by: AWW at June 30, 2004 7:41 PMThe great thing about being a pollster is you're playing with house money up until the end of October. So long as your poll doesn't skewer so far out of the mainstream to invite intense scrutiny of your methods, a pollster can tinker around with their sample voter pool, survey questions or other methodology any way they want right now, and there's no way to prove or disprove their findings.
It's only the polls taken directly before an election that can be gagued with any certainty, which is why I think even September may be too early to take the duling poll samples seriously. Wait until about Halloween, since those are the numbers the polling firms will be staking their reputations on once the actual votie totals come back.
Posted by: John at June 30, 2004 8:09 PMPollsters aren't accountable - with the exception of Zogby, who gets ridiculed in even the mainstream press, no one knows who they are. And if the public thinks CBS is biased, well, they will think CBS polls are biased, too.
Remember the Biffle poll.
Posted by: jim hamlen at June 30, 2004 9:03 PMJim - the Biffle poll?
Posted by: AWW at June 30, 2004 10:59 PMArizonans know that the KAET (the local public television station) polls always skew about 3 points to the left. I don't think Bush will carry Arizona by 12, but I'd give odds that he'll win by more than he did in 2000 (6 points over Gore; 3.3 points more than Gore/Nader combined). In fact, considering the 6.28% point victory in 2000, I've never understood why AZ is in the battlegound column.
Posted by: "Edward" at July 1, 2004 12:09 AMIf KAET skews left, does this mean than President Bush is really 15 points ahead in Arizona?
Posted by: Steve at July 1, 2004 2:59 AMCould it be 1992 all over again, with Ralph in the role of Ross Perot?
(Or will it be Ralph playing a stunning rerun of 2000?)
Posted by: Barry Meislin at July 1, 2004 6:42 AMAZ is probably considered a battleground because it was one of the few states in 2002 to go Democratic by electing Napolitano as governor. Therefore' AZ must be swinging left, right?
The national media probably paid no attention that the governor's race was split three ways and that without Mahoney running as an independent, Matt Salmon (the GOP candidate) might have won.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at July 1, 2004 12:08 PM