Democracy Corps is
your one stop shop for election insights. They have a new pre-debate PDF that outlines what should be going on right now inside the Kerry HQ.
Anyone who for some unknown reason has followed my diary will know I think Stan Greenberg & Co have far an away the clearest picture of what's going on with the electorate. So check below the fold for my summary of this slideshow:
Pages 1-5: In the 3-way trial heat, we still have Bush with a tiny lead. The lead is the same in Battleground states and among independents, though, it's unclear why this is the only poll that shows Kerry behind among independents.
Page 6: It appears that Kerry is losing a few Democrats that say they will vote D at the congressional level. Why is this? Two possibilities. One is foreign policy; there may be some Democrats who believe Zell Miller, that John Kerry cannot be trusted as commander-in-chief. The other is gay marriage, which may be effective in moving a small number of African American voters to vote for Bush.
Page 7: Surprise, Surprise; undecided voters don't like Bush. In essence, they have made the decision to "fire Bush", now they must make the decision to "hire Kerry". That's the point of the debates. We also see again in the "who will you vote for in Congress" question that many of these voters plan on voting Democrat. So these are folks who stand a very good chance of deciding to "hire Kerry", provided he can cross the foreign policy threshold.
Page 16-18: Here we go again on issues. We've seen this all before; people like Bush on terrorism, Iraq is split with a slight lean towards Bush, the Medicare Bill sucks, and ... here's the new one ... Kerry leads in Making America respected in the world. This appears to be a winning issue; Americans, especially swing voters, want the world to like us, and know that's not happening now.
Another surprise here is the weakening GOP tax advantage. Usually Republicans have a much much greater advantage on taxes, but apparently the attacks on the Bush tax cuts as a war on work have succeeded. Likewise the net advantage on foreign policy is lower than usual.
Page 22-23: Independents don't like Bush. Nor do undecideds. Film at 11.
Page 24-27: Lots of polling on Iraq here. More and more people believe that Iraq is not worth it. Kerry's recent turn, to claim that Bush is living in "fantasy land", will clearly be successful, and if anything push these numbers up.
Page 28-33: Between 15% and 25% of voters say the debates may sway their votes. Assuming those are split evenly between Bush, Kerry, and undecided, that means that there could still be a serious enough swing in the polls to put this election to be through the debates.
Once again, we see that the swingy debate watchers aren't happy with Iraq or the country. We also see that Iraq is becoming more of a factor than the economy.
The most interesting number here, I think, is on page 33. Conviction seems much much more important than actual issue stances. As Mark Schmitt says, it's not what you say about the issues, it's what the issues say about you. Kerry must prove to the audience that he means what he says, that opening the contract process to other nations is important because it helps save American lives, that thinking creatively about training Iraqis is important because it helps save American lives, and so on.
Page 37: Hey! No one likes the Medicare bill! C'mon, you guys, get with the program! Maybe if I find some seniors who are happy with it they can convince the world how great it is! :)
Page 38-45: Here we get lots of message testing on Iraq. The winning issues that Kerry is using are the number of lives lost, the continued bad news on the ground, Halliburton, and "going to war without a plan to keep the peace". The last two, especially, fall into the meta narrative of Bush incompetence.
Overall, this poll suggests that the 26% of the electorate that is "soft" for one candidate or another or is undecided will break for Kerry 2-1. With initial horserace numbers of 47-45, that gives Kerry 50.3-49.6 majority. Small changes one way or another will make a large difference.
I stick with the prediction the folks at MyDD make, that this election will not be close. A resolute, on message Kerry at the debates will put this to rest once and for all.