I participate fairly heavily in a local community's Politics forum.
Recently, the local wingnut (who can't even vote, because he's not a citizen yet, but that hasn't stopped him from staking out a position on the far right in anticipation of that day) was gloating about Mr. Bush's incredible bounce.
Most of us finally talked him down from Newsweek-land, after John Zogby and Scott Rasmussen both noted the issues they had with the Newsweek results, but that didn't stop him from being completely obnoxious about Bush's 'lead' so, courtesy of the internals on the recent Gallup poll, I had to take him down a peg. I'm reposting that analysis here for the benefit of any of you who'd care to borrow it for your own wingnut acquaintances.
Well, looking at demographics, 35% of the population identifies as Republicans, 38-39% as Democrats, with the balance showing another (or no) affiliation. The Gallup internals show support within each party at 90%-7% in favour of that party's candidate.
Currently the unaffiliated voters are breaking 49%-46% for Senator Kerry.
Applying the math here:
Amongst the 35% who are Republicans, 90% support Mr. Bush, 7% support Sen. Kerry. Translating back to percentages: Bush 31.5%, Kerry 2.45%.
Amongst the 38% (using the low end of the range here) who are Democrats, the same is true. Those figures translate to 2.66% for Mr. Bush, 34.2% for Sen. Kerry.
The remaining 27% split 46% for Mr. Bush, 49% for Sen. Kerry- or 12.42% for Bush, 13.23% for Kerry.
Adding these up, we have Bush at 46.33% to 49.88% for Kerry, with the balance of 3.79 undecided.
So- the margin in the race (using web-available demographics, and the Gallup polling numbers) looks like it favours Sen. Kerry by about 3.5%. This means absolutely nothing on an electoral college basis, of course, but the numbers amongst voters who aren't either Democratic or Republican core presently tilt somewhat against the incumbent- and conventional wisdom shows that undecideds tend to break against a sitting president anyway.
This should be the Bush high-water mark, barring an October Surprise- without something drastic, it's hard to picture Bush's numbers rising significantly, especially with the mounting Iraq death toll, no significant developments in the pursuit of al Qaeda, and a still-sluggish economy and job market.
Hope this can be of some assistance to others out there- if not in 'converting' your antagonists, at least to shutting them up.