Centerfield

I'm not so sure how much to make of the "no Kerry bounce" and "Kerry should be further ahead" memes. In essence, these presume that Bush WILL get the bounce. Maybe he will, and if he actually does, then this suggests to me that Bush is in very good shape. But what if Bush doesn't get much of any bounce either?

The reason I wonder is that my sense is that there are fewer undecided than usual at this point, and the remaining smaller group of undecideds is the hardcore group that is VERY undecided and doesn't like either guy. At this point, my hypothesis is that this accounts for no Kerry bounce, and the absence of a solid Bush bounce would confirm it.

My understanding of this site is simply that it's based on the latest available state polls, and uses the solid/weak/barely categorization it shows. The tally of the vote is based on presuming those results hold. As such it's not really a forecaster as much as a "best available thermometer' with a fair amount of at-a-glance info summarzed. Surely the categorization explicitly recognizes that many states are in play even as it provides the tally.

The states you mention surely are in play. Absent convincing evidence of a solid lean one way or the other, I always expect that when push comes to shove the state will choose the same party it chose last time. I expect Ohio to go Bush and the Mn to go Kerry, and a few of the other nearby states seem totally uncallable.

But Florida seems to be polling solidy for Kerry by 4-7 points. Bush probably needs Florida as well as Ohio unless he sweeps the other states with tennish electoral votes. It looks like Kerry can get it done with only one or the other. We'll see. I'm going to be looking very closely at the Bush bounce data.

I think its way too early to be making predictions until after the GOP convention. My sense is, even though I support Kerry, is that Bush is in pretty good shape and is likely to win absent something startling happening. I just don't think Kerry can win on the terrorism issue; Bush has control of the agenda and, while Iraq is a mess, it's not getting worse. The economy is a problem for Bush but probably not as bad as in 1992.

Brian,

I concede that if there is not a Bush bounce, and he continues to stay 2-5 points behind in most polls after the convention, it could be a sign that the gig is up. I bet he is up though by 3 to 10 points a week or two after the convention.

The set in stone theory is an interesting one, but I think there is a large chunk of the electorate that goes where the wind blows, and I just can't see it blowing behind Kerry's sail in any consistent manner.

It looks from the poll that there are some good/bad for both parties. I could be reading it wrong, but it looks like more swing voters identify themselves as Conservative or Moderate Republicans than Liberal or Moderate Democrats, so that could swing well for Bush (34% to 30%). On the other hand, more union members are swing voters than non-union members to that could swing well for Kerry (30% to 20%).

I was a little surprised by the size of the gender gap. I'm surprised that isn't reported more because that seems to be one of the bigger issues for the Bush campaign.

These polls are always so puzzling to me because I find myself trying to figure out the people that respond to them. For example, how can George Bush be considered to be more personally likable than Kerry, but be perceived to be less caring about people than Kerry? Do people *really* like people that don't seem to care about people? That makes no sense! And how can it be that Bush will do a better job on terrorism than Kerry, but not as good of a job on foreign policy? Don't the two go hand-in-hand?

Maybe you're not supposed to try to read too much into these responses, but all these polls say to me is that the public bites whatever hook the political ads toss out there. I don't really think there's a whole lot of serious, independent thought that people put into a candidate before they respond to these questions. I'm just not sure that people really know what to think when it comes to these two candidates. Maybe this poll reflects that, if nothing else.

No, you know what? What I said above is stupid. It's far too simplistic. I don't really think that people blindly bite at the political ad hook. In fact, I think most people have gotten pretty good at tuning those ads out, and most people know they are partisan and take them as such. They know they are not reliable representations of either candidate. That said, they do make nice, neat little packages of information that are easy to grab and hold on to (fast-food information, if you will. Easy to get quickly, but not so good for you), which plays into what I'm going to say next.

I think that there is *so* much information out there (especially in this election), and such a deafening roar of opinions that the average joe may be completely and totally overwhelmed by it. I think what this poll is showing is that people are suffering from information overload. There's so much info that they can't possibly digest it all and form it into a firm, coherent stance on either candidate. Now, of course, some individuals process obscene amounts of information just fine and are able to use it to their advantage. By "people" please understand that I mean people in the sense of "the masses." :-)

I'm going to take this one step further and suggest that perhaps information overload also accounts for some of the other things we were discussing this week. Could information overload keep people from showing interest in politics? Could it keep them from feeling like they have a grip on the issues, which in turn makes them feel too stupid to participate intelligently? My coworker said to me today that she felt this way. Then in the next breath she said, "But I'm a news junkie." Hmmmm...... Interesting....

Could I/O maybe also account for the predominance of the two parties (forgive me if this was discussed in that thread--I didn't read that one)? I mean, with how much information these two parties spew forth, how could we even add to that the information that other parties would produce? I mean, there are 24 hour news channels, but there are only 24 hours in a day, you know? Maybe the field has been winnowed down so much because people simply can't handle the noise that would be produced by any more than two major players. Our brains are only so big--there has to be a limit to what we can process and use to form our beliefs/opinions.

Wow. Long-winded. Hope that all made sense--sorry if it didn't; I'm a little tired tonight. Stayed up too late watching the Olympics last night and now my mind's not firing quite as quickly as I'd like. :-)

On the topic of a Bush bounce or not, I've found myself thinking that the best thing that could happen for Bush during the convention is for its relative uneventfulness to be overshadowed by much more exciting coverage of strident, simplistic, angry, and even violent protest. People respond viscerally to angry hot emotions, and if home viewers make a gut level connection that you need to vote for Bush if you think the protesters are misguided, Kerry will be sunk. If the angry ABB crowd blows its cool and overflows with frustration and anger in front of a national audience, it will inspire the strongly liberal Kerry states but push the more moderate battleground states to the right.

I/O is an interesting concept to me. The thesis of my graduate project was that the increasing flow of information requires people who want to truly understand the greater world to become active editors of the information that they are exposed to, fact checking, providing missing relevant info, etc.

The "information" we are usually overloaded with is almost always selective, and the selectivity is based on some motive, and often the primary motive is not to inform, but to persuade and/or to entertain.

My sense is that the most common response to I/O is simple shutdown, learned helplessness. "I can't make coherent sense of this, so I'll just keep believing what I believe and ignore most of the flow, except for what confirms my views."

I didn't find the poll incoherent at all. The contrast Amy cited didn't surprise me one whit, and if instead of being nonplussed you embrace it, you'll be on the way to a better understanding of human nature. And besides, the likability question is usually interpreted as "is this someone you feel like you'd enjoy hanging out with?" which people don't usually consciously connect with general compassion for humanity. People don't want to have a few beers with a saint.

Likeability is also in large part a visceral response. There are a lot of people who vote or don't vote for someone because "he just seems like a good guy" or "I just don't like him." And the short circuit shutdown of I/O actually enables people in defaulting to their visceral response instead of battling through a gray reasoning process.