Interesting graf from today's Rasmussen tracking poll--which, I have to admit, I find addictive even though I understand intellectually that it's meaningless:
"Eighty-three percent (83%) of Bush voters say they are 'certain' they will vote for him. Seventy-six percent (76%) of Kerry voters are equally 'certain.'"
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm
Today's poll has Bush and Kerry tied again at 46 percent each. This seems pretty much in keeping with the slight tilt one way or another that has characterized the poll basically since the race came into focus. So a little quick math yields that about 38.2 percent of the electorate is more or less absolutely committed to voting for Bush, even through the proverbial dead girl or live boy appearing in his bed; Kerry can count on about 35 percent of absolutely rock-solid support. (Of course, this doesn't get to issues of base mobilization, GOTV, or most importantly how much of this support is concentrated in swing states vs. safe states... which gets back to the meaninglessness of the poll.)
Based on anecdotal evidence, indepdendents seem to be swinging toward Kerry, and hopefully he'll close strongly as he usually does in his campaigns and win a big enough majority of late-deciders to get Bush that one-way bus ticket back to Crawford. But it still dismays me that nearly 2 in 5 voters can be so totally blind to how short-term ineffective and long-term corrosive the Bush misrule has been. Presumably these are the folks who think Iraq blew up the WTC, had nukes, and conspired with Bill "the Great Fornicator" Clinton to sacrifice Christian babies to welfare advocates, antiwar protesters and other enemies of freedom...