How likely is it that the dimensions of this presidential race will change between now and the election?
Quite likely. Most importantly, candidates have now apparently agreed to three presidential debates in late September and early October, and those debates have the potential to shake things up significantly.
The previous elections for which we have polling data show that the gap between candidates closes more often than it opens in the last month of the campaign. Since Bush is leading at the moment, it's more probable, given the historical patterns, that Kerry will gain rather than lose.
From a less scientific perspective, elections often go in cycles. Kerry has had a number of bad weeks. He now has new advisers and apparently some new strategic focal points. So it's possible that he may begin to gain some of the ground he has lost.
What can we learn from Bush's current job approval ratings?
It's helpful to place Bush's current job approval rating in the context of the last four presidents who ran for re-election: Bill Clinton (1996), George Bush the elder (1992), Ronald Reagan (1984), and Jimmy Carter (1980). The two men who won -- Clinton and Reagan -- had job approval ratings of 60% and 57%, respectively, in September of their re-election years. On the other hand, the two men who lost -- Bush and Carter -- had September job approval ratings of 36% and 37% in their re-election years.
One way of looking at these numbers is that the last two winners were averaging a 58.5% job approval rating at this point in their campaign -- 6.5 percentage points higher than Bush's current rating. On the other hand, the two most recent losers were averaging 36.5% -- 15.5 points lower than Bush's current reading. So Bush is closer to the trajectory of the winners than the losers at this point in time.
Plus, it's generally a good sign for an incumbent to have a job approval rating at or above 50%. If the incumbent can translate that approval percentage into votes, he wins (at least the popular vote).
Both Bush's background and Kerry's background have been attacked repeatedly in recent weeks. Are these attacks taking a toll on the candidates' images?
Kerry's image has deteriorated slightly over the last month or so, coincident with the focus on his Swift Boat activities during his service in Vietnam and the GOP allegations that he has "flip flopped" on the issues.
After the Democratic convention in Boston (according to a July 30-Aug. 1 Gallup Poll), Kerry had a 57% favorable, 37% unfavorable rating. According to the most recent Sept. 13-15 poll, Kerry's image rating has slipped to 51% favorable and 44% unfavorable. In other words, Kerry has gone from a 20-point favorability gap (the difference between his favorable and unfavorable ratings) to a 7-point favorability gap.
At the same time, Bush has gone from a 6-point favorability gap (52% favorable, 46% unfavorable) in the July 30-Aug. 1 poll, to an 11-point favorability gap now (55% favorable, 44% unfavorable).
Even though the two candidates have quite similar image ratings at the moment, the trend has not been in Kerry's favor. His significant advantage over Bush in early August has dwindled to the point at which he is now at a slight disadvantage.
Everyone keeps talking about the elusive swing voters. What's on their minds these days?
New Gallup analysis suggests that swing voters are more interested in domestic issues than either Bush supporters or Kerry supporters.
A review by Senior Gallup Poll Editor Lydia Saad shows that in a recent Gallup Poll, 43% of swing voters choose the economy as the issue most important to their presidential votes this year, followed by 27% who choose healthcare. Only 17% select Iraq and 11% pick terrorism. (Bush voters, on the other hand, strongly feel that terrorism is their top voting criteria. Kerry voters, like swing voters, choose the economy as the top issue, but are more likely to choose Iraq than healthcare.)
In short, it appears that the voters who are most vulnerable to persuasion by campaign blandishments in the weeks ahead -- swing voters -- are most eager to hear the candidates' positions on domestic issues rather than discussions about terrorism and Iraq.
Given that the U.S. economy is not booming at the moment, why hasn't Kerry done better in the polls?
That's a good question, particularly because our data show that Americans are narrowly more likely to say that Kerry is better able to handle the economy than is Bush.
I think there are two factors that help explain the situation.
First, while voters certainly do not believe that the United States is in a robust economic recovery yet, they are not nearly so negative as they were in 1992 and 1980, when the last two incumbents were thrown out of office.
In September 1992, when Bush the elder was struggling against Clinton, the public's net positive rating of the national economy was at a -40 level, meaning that 51% of Americans rated the economy as poor, while only 11% rated it as excellent or good. That was downright terrible -- a major perceptual indictment of the administration's leadership on the economy.
In contrast, the current net positive rating of economic conditions is +17. Thirty-nine percent of Americans rate the economy as excellent or good, while only 22% rate it as poor. While that's not a great endorsement of the economy, it indicates that the current president Bush is sitting in a more comfortable position than his father was, economically speaking.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the Bush campaign has managed to turn voters' attention more toward national security and leadership issues and away from domestic issues. In other words, it appears that some swing voters may believe that the state of the economy doesn't matter if basic security and the safety issues are not taken care of.
In September 2000, Gallup asked voters which of two dimensions they felt was most important in choosing between Al Gore and Bush: 1) the candidates' stances on the issues, or 2) the candidates' leadership and vision attributes. Among likely voters at that time, issues won out over leadership, by a 48% to 33% margin. Fast forward to September 2004, and we find the reverse. By a 50% to 38% margin, voters say that the leadership and vision of the candidates is more important than the issues. Issues may not matter to voters in an environment in which they are looking for strong leadership above all else.
These findings help explain to a significant degree, I believe, why Bush is still ahead at this juncture in the campaign. Despite the lukewarm economy and the problems in Iraq, Americans are apparently convinced that they need a leader with vision. All of Gallup's polls show that people are much more likely to see Bush as a strong and decisive leader than Kerry -- by upwards of a 20-point margin.
Has the recent controversy over CBS News' use of purportedly false documents about George W. Bush's National Guard service hurt the media's image?
It's too early to begin to figure out the precise impact of the CBS document flap on the image of the news media in general. But our Sept. 13-15 poll shows that the media's image was none too swell to begin with.
Only 44% of Americans have a great deal (9%) or a fair amount (35%) of trust in the "mass media such as newspapers, TV and radio when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly." Fifty-five percent have "not very much" trust or no trust in the mass media at all.
These ratings are the lowest that the mass media have received across the 11 times Gallup has asked this question since 1972. Last year, 54% of Americans had a great deal of a fair amount of trust. Trust in the media was as high as 72% in June 1976 in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
About half of Americans (48%) say that the mass media are too liberal, while only 15% say they are too conservative. The rest say the mass media are about right. This tendency for Americans to distrust the media and to perceive news coverage as too liberal helps explain the success of conservatively oriented programming such as the Rush Limbaugh radio show and the nighttime talk shows on the Fox News channel.
Are Republicans more likely than Democrats to say the media are too liberal?
Yes. Eighty percent of Republicans say the mass media are too liberal. Only 24% of Democrats, on the other hand, say the mass media are too conservative.
How is the election looking on a state-by-state basis?
The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup showdown state poll was conducted in Iowa, and shows that Bush has moved into a modest six-point lead. Bush was losing to Kerry by six points in Iowa in August, before the GOP convention.
The results of our latest polls in other showdown states indicate that Bush is also leading Kerry in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Missouri. The two candidates are tied in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, while Kerry is ahead in Michigan and Washington.
One state in which we don't yet have new data is Florida. Most polling firms have been unable (or unwilling) to poll in Florida over the last several weeks because of the hurricane devastation that has thrown the state's infrastructure out of kilter. Our Gallup field force indicates that things are looking somewhat better there now, and we will likely have a read on Florida voters in the next several days.
Some observers are opining that Florida could tilt a little more toward Bush because of the high visibility the president and his brother (Florida Gov. Jeb Bush) are receiving as they travel the state announcing federal monetary disaster relief. But we will have to wait and see what the data show in the Sunshine State.