Remember how Kerry won last week’s debate and then a Newsweek poll on Saturday showed Kerry with the lead? Not so fast. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Bush still has a 5 point lead. (Of course, ABC has to headline it that Kerry is gaining ... in personal ratings.) And then if you start to look into the internals of the poll you see even more positive signs.
All the media were so intent that Kerry just had to win last Thursday’s debate that the headlines were written before it was over. But the reality is that biggest audience in history for a non-funeral political event (64 million) watched the debate, and a majority still liked Bush for president.
And the Kerry spin?
Forty-seven percent now express a favorable opinion of Kerry, up eight points from before the debate. For the first time since the Republican convention, more voters see him favorably than unfavorably, a critical tipping point.
Whoop-de-doo! More people have a favorable view of Kerry than people who don’t like him. That’s not exactly a great endorsement of Kerry’s campaign.
At this stage, it is much more productive to look at the Electoral College voting than the “popular” vote polls.
Bush has around 300 EC votes, far more than he needs.
That’s not likely to change substantially unless there’s some sort of cataclysmic change, and it’s not likely that Kerry can pull a rabbit out of his hat—the support for Bush, where it counts, is just too strong.