Looks Like Kerry Will Win: Here's WhyHere are a couple of interesting points I ran across recently. Each man argues, for his own reasons, why he thinks Kerry will win.
Referendum on the Incumbent, Part 1
From veteran political journalist, and Ole Miss associate professor Curtis Wilkie, we hear the first theory.
Wilkie serves as Kelly Gene Cook Sr. chair for the journalism department. Wilkie has covered the past eight presidential elections, with the 2004 election being the first he will not cover in over 30 years.
Wilkie compared this year’s election with the election of 1980 when President Jimmy Carter was soundly defeated by Ronald Reagan, in what Wilkie viewed as a “referendum on the incumbent.”
According to Wilkie, there are many parallels connecting the two elections, such as a deficient economy and a volatile global situation. He also said that in the 1980 election the initial polls were very close, much like they are now. He said that when it came down to the actual voting, the American people could not vote for a president that had so many misses.
Among the problems listed by Wilkie are the deteriorating situation in Iraq, the loss of American jobs, Bush’s miscues involving the environment and the national deficit brought on by Bush’s tax cuts.
(Source)
Referendum on the Incumbent, Part 2, or How To REALLY Interpret The Polls
Leading Pollster Guy Molyneux Explains Why the Media Is Overestimating Bush's Lead
Guy Molyneux is a highly respected analyst and pollster who serves as a Senior Vice President and Partner of Peter Hart Research Associates. In an article now available on the American Prospect's website he presents an extremely important analysis of why the media is overestimating Bush's lead and underestimating how close the race actually is. Excerpts follow.
"Media analysis [of the 2004 election] is marred by a failure to take account of a phenomenon well-known to all political pollsters, the “incumbent 50-percent rule.”
Almost all poll reporting focuses on the “spread,” that is, the difference in the percentage supporting Bush and John Kerry.... However, in incumbent elections, the incumbent’s percentage of the vote is a far better indicator of the state of the race than the spread. In fact, the percentage of the vote an incumbent president receives in surveys is an extraordinarily accurate predictor of the percentage he will receive on election day - even though the survey results also include a pool of undecided voters.
[The reason is that] elections are fundamentally a referendum on the incumbent. The first step in voters’ decision-making process is to answer the question “does he deserve re-[s]election?” Undecided voters have basically answered that question in the negative, and their undecided status reflects the fact that they don’t know enough about the challenger (yet) to feel comfortable stating a public preference.
Think of it this way: The percentage that Bush receives in polls represents his ceiling of support; he may get a little less, but won’t get more. In contrast, Kerry’s percentage represents his floor, and he will almost certainly do better on election day.
(Source: Emerging Democratic Majority)
