FalconBlog--Triumphs and Trials in the BGSU Falcon Nation

No bounce? Here's why

As usual, Zogby nails it. You can't bounceaball with no air in it. The public is polarized and determined on thiselection,and there is no one to swing. Its going to come down to turnout,not hugeelectorate swings. And the election will be decided by issues ofwar andprosperity no one controls.

CONVENTION CONUNDRUM

This election year, a 'bounce' falls flat
Kerry left Boston without much of a budge in the polls, but that's not surprising given the tightness of the race. Now, it's on to New York


BY JOHN ZOGBY
John Zogby is president and CEO of Zogby International, an independent polling firm.

August 6, 2004

Matthew Dowd is a bright guy. He would have to be as pollster for the president of the United States. So when he declared a short time before the Democratic National Convention that John Kerry would receive about a 15-point bounce, he was displaying both a good sense of history and an astute skill in the game of expectations.

First, the history. Traditionally, a presidential candidate can expect a substantial bounce from his party's convention. Bill Clinton set the record with a 16-point bounce from the 1992 Democratic convention - a lead he never lost on his way to victory that year. And even Bob Dole got within a few points of Clinton in 1996 after the Republican convention that year. Only poor George McGovern in 1972 never emerged from a badly fractured Democratic convention with any bounce at all.

As a result of the historical bounces, pollsters and consultants love to play the expectations game. Some set the bar high, as Dowd did for Kerry. Then, if the candidate does not reach the bar raised by press and pundits, the convention was a failure.

But 2004 is proving to be a history-defying year in many ways. For starters, summer conventions are generally held in periods when about 20 to 25 percent of the voters are still undecided in national polls, and another 20 percent tell us pollsters that they could still change their minds.

Compare that with this year: Only 5 percent are genuinely undecided and only 3 percent of each candidate's supporters say they could still change their minds. There just is not the elasticity in 2004 to produce the kinds of dramatic bounces of the past.

Other factors also make this year different. Suffice it to say that voters in this country are about evenly split on most issues and almost evenly split on the candidate they will support. All of which suggests how closely fought this election will be.

John Kerry now leads the president in my latest poll by 5 points - 48 to 43 percent. Not surprisingly, Kerry received no real national bounce. Earlier in July he led 48 to 46 percent. It's the president's numbers that have gone down.

My polling since May has revealed just how difficult it will be for President George W. Bush to win this election. His job performance rating is 42 percent positive. The percentage of those who feel he "deserves to be re-elected" is only 42 percent, and only 41 percent feel that the country is headed in the right direction. Bush's edge over Kerry on battling the war on terrorism is now only 5 points, down from 24 points two months ago. And among those who feel that the economy is the top issue, Kerry leads by healthy double digits. Kerry's leads among those who cite health care and the war in Iraq are also double digits.

More ominously for the Bush campaign, when we ask those who are still undecided, their measures of the president's job performance, his deserving re-election and the country's moving in the right direction are only in the 20s. In other words, the overwhelming portion of the undecideds is not likely to vote for Bush's re-election.

It would appear that the president is facing an uphill battle. He has to get his own ratings up, he has to knock Kerry's numbers down, and he will have to dampen turnout overall in an electorate that to date looks like it will go to the polls in great numbers.

Given all of this, don't expect any real bounce after the Republicans convene in New York later this month. Bush will have to persuade at least some on the other side of the divide that the economy is good, his leadership is solid, Iraq is successfully moving toward democracy without Americans in harm's way, and his second term will be better. He is also going to have to convince the overwhelming majority of those undecided voters that he is doing a good job and the country is indeed headed in the right direction.

If he can do all that in four New York City nights (with only three hours on prime-time TV), he will receive a candidate's traditional big bounce. I think that is a very tall order and expect that Bush will only bounce to a tie with Kerry.

Then let the games begin.