Swing State Project: General Election Cattle Call, July 19

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Monday, July 19, 2004

General Election Cattle Call, July 19

(Previous Numbers in Parenthesis)

National Two-Party Vote Projection
Kerry: 52.45 (52.82)
Bush: 47.55 (48.18)
Status: Lean Kerry

Electoral Vote Projection
Kerry: 322, 238 solid (same)
Bush: 216, 143 solid (216, 128)
States Changing Party Hands: FL, MO, NH and OH
States Projected clsoer than three points: AR, NV, NC and TN for Bush (37), MO and OH for Kerry (31)

Georgia moved back into Bush's solid category after a brief trip into the "lean Bush" bracket. It sure was nice while it lasted.

Right now, Bush and Kerry are fighting this election primarily in Ohio and Missouri, with Florida, Nevada, Oregon, New Hampshire and Michigan running close behind (see this article for more info). If Kerry can hold the Gore states and swing either MO or OH, he will be the next President of the united states. Fortunately, at least Missouri has a Democratic Governor. I am seriously starting to believe that Missouri will be ground sero if this election is as close as 2000. Anyone know about voting machines in Missouri?

Posted at 03:28 PM in General Election Cattle Call | Technorati

Comments

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/ says that Bush is leading Kerry 47% to 45% in national polls. What do people here have to say about that?

Posted by: Inkan1969 at July 19, 2004 04:44 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

With regard to voting machines in Missouri, it varies county-by-county. A handful of counties are the old-fashioned, manually counted paper ballots. Most are either punch card systems (including both St. Louis City and County), or optical scanning systems. It appears that none of them are the touchscreen type. Here is a link to a list from the Missouri Elections Division:

http://www.sos.mo.gov/elections/votingsystem.asp

Posted by: gary_dr2 at July 19, 2004 05:36 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/ says that Bush is leading Kerry 47% to 45% in national polls. What do people here have to say about that?

Unless you're looking at some other report there that I can't find, what you're referring to isn't about "national polls" (plural), it's today's result for Rasmussen own daily tracking poll, the only daily tracking poll of the presidential election that I know of -- and, yes indeed, today it does show Bush ahead by 2. Looking at bit closer at it, yesterday they were tied, two days ago Kerry was ahead by 1, 9 days ago he was ahead by 4; but 12 days ago Bush was ahead by 1, and so on.

What does that tell us? It tells us that as far as head-to-head horse race match-ups go, the race is still very close, which is not anything we didn't already know.

What Chris is doing is something quite different, as a quick look at his methodology will show, and there's no particular reason to think that his results and Rasmussen's conflict in any way, as they're not measuring the same thing. Rasmussen hopes that their tracking poll is an indicator of national trends at the moment, while Chris is using current data, past voting records, and other information to project the outcome of the race.

That Bush might possibly be ahead at the moment in one particular poll (with a margin of error much greater than the lead Bush is shown as having) doesn't in any way invalidate Chris's projection.

Posted by: Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) at July 19, 2004 05:39 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

ELECTLINE: ANALYSTS INDICATE CLOSE BUSH WIN
posted at Rumormill.com
by Thomas Fagan, former editor-in-chief, ElectNet.org

There are three general groups of presidential
election predictors available today in the media.
Besides the familiar national polls, which take
snapshots of contemporary political leanings at large,
there are also systems of electoral vote counters and
projection predictors which use historical data,
demographics, and voting trends to chart future shifts
and final results.

[Comment post truncated due to length. Please see link above. - David]

Posted by: tom fagan at July 19, 2004 06:56 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Tom, please post links to full articles, not the entire articles themselves. Thanks.

Posted by: DavidNYC at July 19, 2004 07:57 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

The RumorMill article that you posted ignores one hugely important fact. That is, we currently have the worst president in decades, who the voting public has already decided they don't want. Throw away the historical mumble-jumble for this election. It doesn't apply!

Kerry will win what will turn out to be an only moderately close election! Hallelujah!!!!!

Posted by: Randy at July 19, 2004 08:20 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

inkan1969 (& unfutz)
Rasmussen's "Margin of Error" is stated as 3%. A one day shift of 2% could in reality be a gain, a loss or a stand still. Longer trends and Multiple-sources of polls will ultimately be more useful.

Posted by: jogabr at July 19, 2004 08:53 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I don't know why there is so much pessimism among bloggers about Ohio. The June job numbers were terrible here, 14,000 jobs lost. Unemployment up to 5.9% Bush has yet to get above 45% in any of the recent Ohio state polls. The Dayton swing voter focus group probably gave Matt Dowd, Karl Rove, and Ken Mehlman heartburn. The independents in OHio are leaving Bush, but not sold on Kerry yet. Hopefully Kerry pulls them over with his convention speech.

Btw, I live in between the Dayton and Cincinnati media markets. Edwards is playing well in all parts of Ohio.

Posted by: pc at July 19, 2004 09:46 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Rasmussen's "Margin of Error" is stated as 3%. A one day shift of 2% could in reality be a gain, a loss or a stand still.

Exactly why I included a remark about the size of the "leads" in relation to the larger margin of error in my comment.

Posted by: Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) at July 19, 2004 11:09 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I posted this a couple of months ago, but it bears repeating: Rasmussen's last poll in 2000 showed Bush winning nationally be a 9% margin, which was by far the worst of any national poll. Perhaps for that reason, they aren't even covered by PollingReport.com. ALL of the recent polls covered by PollingReport.com either have Kerry ahead (some by more and some by less than the margin of error) or, in 1 case (the Washington Post poll) have it dead even.

Posted by: gary at July 20, 2004 07:37 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

As for the voting machines in Missouri, let's just say that it is nice that the campaign is deploying lawyers across the country. St. Louis is notorious for having problems on election night and this looks to be no different. Last election, there were several thousand voters who were turned away on election night, so there was a movement to allow for changes in the voting structure. However, this was blocked by Matt Blunt, the Sec. of State and Republican candidate for Gov.

Adding to the problems in Missouri is that we have had a brutal primary battle between the Dem candidates. This has really hurt the overall image of the party and will make it more difficult to win the state. On the bright side, with all of the in-fighting, we are still essentially tied in the state and after the primary, Kerry will start visiting again.

Posted by: Eric Karlovic at July 20, 2004 10:03 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Almost every poll I've seen for Missouri has Bush in the lead. Unfortunately, Missouri seems to be heading to the right even with our crackpot right-wing legislature. I fear Holden (current Dem governor) is going to lose his bid for re-election after having to face a primary battle and going up against a well-funded challenger. We're going to need big Dem turnouts in KC and St. Louis to counter almost every single rural county voting red.

The good thing is that Kerry doesn't need MO to win. He actually doesn't need OH either as long as we get both PA and FL.

Posted by: Brandon R. at July 20, 2004 01:29 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Thanks for the posts about Rasmussen Reports, friends. It made me feel better about that poll. Today, 7/20, the numbers are the same. I'm sure this poll will be reversed during the Democratic Convention.

Posted by: Inkan1969 at July 20, 2004 02:44 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Almost every poll I've seen for Missouri has Bush in the lead.

MISSOURI (MO-11)
- was GOP by 3.34%
- DecisionRes(Dem) 2/19 K49-B46 moe3.5
- SuffolkU 3/2 K39-B50-N5 moe?
- Rasmussen 3/23 K42-B49 moe4.5
- Zogby 5/24 K47.2-B43.9-N2.1 moe4.3 (K+3.3in)
- Rasmussen 5/31 K43-B44 moe5
- Zogby 6/6 K47.6-B48.6-N0.9 moe2.7 (B+1in)
- LATimes 6/8 K37-B48-N4 moe4
- PubOpStrat(GOP) 6/8 K44-B49 moe4
- Zogby 6/21 K47.9-B48.6-N1 moe3.1 (B+0.7in)
- Rasmussen 6/30 K44-B48 moe5
- SurveyUSA 7/8 K46-B48 moe3.6
- Zogby 7/12 K50.1-B46.8-N0.7 moe3.3 (K+3.3in)

Only the 5/24 and 7/12 Zogby interactive show Kerry ahead (along with the Democratic Decision Research of 2/19).

Posted by: Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) at July 20, 2004 04:38 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Posted by: logos at November 3, 2004 11:26 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

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Monday, July 19, 2004

General Election Cattle Call, July 19

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