The latest Gallup poll projects that more Republicans than Democrats will vote in 2004, the opposite of what happened in 2000. And poll screening frequently excludes new registrants because while they may be highly motivated to vote in this election, they didn't vote in the last one. In the latest Democracy Corps poll, new registrants favor Kerry by a 24-point margin. Finally, in a recent article in Public Opinion Quarterly, New York University political science professor Robert Erikson and two colleagues argue that week-to-week shifts in Gallup's likely-voter results stem not from shifts in voters' views but from changes in the composition of Gallup's likely-voter pool.
Where it gets you: If you average the registered-voter numbers from the latest big polls -- CBS/New York Times, ABC/Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and Gallup -- you get Bush up by about 1.2 points.
Forget the comparative polls -- watch Bush's numbers.
There's one thing on which Democratic and Republican strategists agree, at least sometimes: the most important number to watch in a reelection race is the one belonging to the incumbent. The president's number in pre-election polling -- whether it's his percentage of support from respondents or his job-approval rating -- is a good predictor of the percentage of votes the president will receive on Election Day.
That's the point that Bush-Cheney pollster Matthew Dowd made back in March, when he said that "normally, presidents finish roughly the same as their job-approval numbers." And it's the point that Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg made on a call with reporters Tuesday. "Everybody I know who runs a campaign focuses on that number as where he's likely to end up."
The theory is this: After four years with George W. Bush, people know him and know what they think about him. Barring some catastrophic external event, people who are lined up against Bush now aren't likely to move in his direction on Election Day, and undecided voters are likely to break heavily in favor of Kerry. So Kerry can pick up votes on Election Day -- so many that he can win even if polls accurately show him trailing by a few points the night before the election -- but Bush is stuck with whatever number he's got. Or so the theory goes.
So let's go to the numbers, starting with Bush's job-approval rating. The ABC/Washington Post poll has it at 54; Gallup has it at 51; Time has it at 49; Newsweek and Democracy Corps have it at 47; the CBS/New York Times poll has it at 44. Average them all, and you get 48.7. Now let's look at Bush's share of the vote in the polls. He gets 51 from the ABC/Washington Post poll, 45 from Zogby, 47 from the CBS/New York Times poll, 52 from Gallup, 47 from Democracy Corps, 50 from Newsweek, 48 from Time. That's an average of 48.6 percent. Use Gallup's 49 percent registered-voter number rather than its 52 percent likely-voter number, and the average drops to 48.
Where it gets you: Is 48.7 or 48.6 or 48 percent enough for Bush to win the popular vote? Maybe. It was just enough for Al Gore to win the popular vote in 2000 -- and lose the Electoral College. If Bush's number is the right number to watch, it appears the 2004 race is exactly as close as the 2000 race was.
Forget the national polls; focus on the Electoral College.
When it's all said and done, the Electoral College vote is the only one that matters. You can keep tabs on the Electoral College vote in a few different places. Each has a different methodology, and each comes up with different results.
Next page: Some poll addicts should just wait two weeks for Tim Russert