Guy Molyneux is a highly respected analyst and pollster who serves as a Senior Vice President and Partner of Peter Hart Research Associates.
Molyneux stated that Bush is at his height and Kerry is at his base. Or, Bush will gain very little in any area and Kerry will be able to move upward.
I just read Teixeira's blog and there is great info on last night's debates which confirms what Molyneax statted. Great independent conformation as far as I can see. Here is Molyneux statement:
Leading Pollster Guy Molyneux Explains Why the Media Is Overestimating Bush's Lead
Guy Molyneux is a highly respected analyst and pollster who serves as a Senior Vice President and Partner of Peter Hart Research Associates. In an article now available on the American Prospect's website he presents an extremely important analysis of why the media is overestimating Bush's lead and underestimating how close the race actually is.
As poll results fluctuate dramatically during the next several weeks, it becomes increasingly critical that Democrats understand and can articulate the real situation and challenge both media misinterpretation and Republican spin.
The following are excerpts from Molyneux's American Prospect article.
"Media analysis [of the 2004 election] is marred by a failure to take account of a phenomenon well-known to all political pollsters, the "incumbent 50-percent rule."
Almost all poll reporting focuses on the "spread," that is, the difference in the percentage supporting Bush and John Kerry...However, in incumbent elections, the incumbent's percentage of the vote is a far better indicator of the state of the race than the spread. In fact, the percentage of the vote an incumbent president receives in surveys is an extraordinarily accurate predictor of the percentage he will receive on election day -- even though the survey results also include a pool of undecided voters.
[The reason is that] elections are fundamentally a referendum on the incumbent. The first step in voters' decision-making process is to answer the question "does he deserve re-election?" Undecided voters have basically answered that question in the negative, and their undecided status reflects the fact that they don't know enough about the challenger (yet) to feel comfortable stating a public preference.
Think of it this way: The percentage that Bush receives in polls represents his ceiling of support; he may get a little less, but won't get more. In contrast, Kerry's percentage represents his floor, and he will almost certainly do better on election day.
How should political journalists deal with the misleading nature of poll spreads that appear to give Bush a significant lead? ...Political reporters can and should put these results in the proper historical context, informing viewers and readers that polls showing an incumbent president receiving 49 percent of the vote are consistent with a very close election result [even if the challenger's support is several percent less].
The alternative, continuing to focus on the spread, ensures press coverage that remains one step behind the real story. If and when Kerry succeeds in narrowing or eliminating the polling gap between him and Bush, the media will report a "dead heat" when, in fact, Kerry will be positioned for victory.
And there is one final factor to consider that isn't captured in the polls at all: the ground war. Democratic 527s such as America Coming Together are conducting massive voter-registration and mobilization campaigns that could easily add 2 or 3 percentage points to Kerry's vote. As the Service Employee International Union's Andy Stern has observed, this field operation is "the greatest field-goal unit in history" -- if Kerry can keep the race close, voter mobilization will give him the last few points he needs.
The polls tell us it may already be close enough.
Here is Teixiera's page:
http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/