Reason and Radical

Bush Bounce Pathetically Small

Ignore the Time and Newsweek surveys. For some reason, their sample skewed significantly higher on registered Republicans, thus making the poll results suspect. Here's what you need to know, from the terrific Donkey Rising site:

"The new Gallup poll, conducted entirely after the GOP convention and therefore the first poll that truly measures Bush's bounce, shows Bush with a very modest bounce indeed: 2 points...

Note also that Bush's 2 point bounce from his convention (which, remember, is defined as the change in a candidate's level of support, not in margin) is the worst ever received by an incumbent president, regardless of party, and the worst ever received by a Republican candidate, whether incumbent or not...

a few other results from the Gallup poll that suggest the relative ineffectiveness of the GOP convention. Bush's acceptance speech, which the media fawned over so ostentatiously, was not rated any better by the public than was Kerry's--in fact, it received slightly worse ratings. Kerry's acceptance speech was rated excellent by 25 percent and good by 27 percent; Bush's was rated excellent by 22 percent and good by 27 percent.

In terms of whether the Republican convention made voters more or less likely to vote for Bush--the real point of the convention after all--there were almost as many saying the convention made them less likely to vote for Bush (38 percent) as said it made them more likely (41 percent). This is actually quite a poor performance. The Democratic convention this year had a substantially better 44 percent more likely/30 percent less likely split.

In fact, looking back to 1984, which is as far back as Gallup supplies data, no candidate has ever had a more likely to vote for/less likely to vote for split even close to as bad as Bush's this year."

posted by Leimodnu @ 2:33 PM