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Saturday, May 01, 2004
General Election Cattle Call, May 1
Posted by Chris BowersNational two-party popular vote projection:
Bush: 50.3
Kerry: 49.7
Too close to call, swing states in play.
Electoral Vote Projection:
Bush: 227
Kerry: 220
Too close to call: 91 (FL, IA, NH, NM, OH, OR, PA)
No new national polls for two days now (I do not use Rasmussen national trial heats because they do not include Nader in their questioning), but the state polls have consistently been in Kerry's favor. The most recent PA poll, from Princeton, showed the race deadlocked. Even the most recent NC poll showed Kerry only down 7, and the NC poll before that showed him only down 8. At this point, it would appear that if Kerry selects Edwards, then North Carolina, which is currently tied with Georgia as the second largest state in Bush's base, would instantly become a swing state.
Right now, DC's Political Report shows WI as solid for Bush. I disagree with that assessment of recent polls from the Badger state, and currently list WI as "lean Kerry."
First, the most recent Bush-Kerry-Nader poll in WI is actually from Rasmussen (conducted only on April 28), not the Badger poll (conducted from April 20-28) as DC Political Report implies. In the Rasmussen poll, Kerry leads 45-41-8, which is a far cry from the Badger poll showing Bush ahead 50-38-6.
Second, if one were to combine all of the recent polls from WI, it would be prudent to use all three recent polls, since the WPR / St. Norbet poll of WI was conducted on two of the same days (April 20-21) as the Badger poll. Like the Rasmussen poll, WPR / St. Norbert shows Kerry with a lead (49-42-7) and Nader with an unjustifiably high result in a state where he only received 3.62% of the vote in 2000.
Third and finally, when combining all three recent WI polls, the highly variable results dictate that the best method for doing so would be to use the central mean rather than the simple mean. In a dataset of three, the central mean would dictate that the central result, the Rasmussen poll, would be included twice while the two outliers would each be included once. This results in three polls showing Kerry ahead in WI, and only one poll showing Kerry behind. Thus, as far as I'm concerned, WI is currently "lean Kerry."
Posted at 04:56 PM in General Election Cattle Call | Technorati