strength: The power to resist attack; impregnability.

It is more difficult ro resist attacks in America with a free media, freely elected congress, and a free internet with debates going all the time about your strength, then it is in Russia. The actual definition does not change, the attacks change. There are more attacks in America against its leaders then in Russia against its leaders.



Then why after the debates do the polls claim he is a strong leader?

To add more fuel to the grow length of this debate:

Today's Washington Post calls Bush with a five point lead.

"In the aftermath of last week's presidential debate, Bush currently leads Kerry 51 percent to 46 percent among those most likely to vote, according to polling conducted Friday through Sunday." (Washington Post)

Poll vs. non poll, data, no data, whatever the complaint is, feel free to comment, I thought it was important to show the at odds every polling place has with one another.

The question I have, as it relates to this debate, is how do you feel that a poll really determines that Bush or Kerry "won" the debate Yehoshua? You have read this thread and have seen that virtually everyone feels that Kerry "won" the debate, even Republicans. So I wonder why you would throw in a poll from the Washington post citing the "lead" that Bush allegedly has. How is that really relevant to who won?

Perhaps you might be interested in discussing your thoughts on polls in the Importance of Polls thread? Just a thought.

Actually, there's quite a difference in these polls. All polls having them tied are counting registered voters. This poll is among likely voters. Quite a difference. I think the debate "win" helped Kerry in the polls, but this poll is more evidence he has a long way to go.

Good addition. Let me see how this came about.

Original:


To which I responded:


Which sparked a debate pertaining to what is a strong leader, and this is on a whole new thread: Strong Leader.

Then I added my response for three reasons:
1. More so to Pittslp idea: "For all those in this discussion whos say that Kerry won, but it won't help him, the latest poll says otherwise, as Kerry has now pulled about even with Bush." You see to the Washington Post article it does not show Bush tied with Kerry.

The second reason was stated in my post: "To add more fuel to the grow length of this debate."

And the third was to point out: "Today's Washington Post calls Bush with a five point lead."

When I said "Poll vs. non poll, data, no data, whatever the complaint is, feel free to comment, I thought it was important to show the at odds every polling place has with one another." I really meant, it is not important to respond to the pool as to the outcome of the poll. This may have confused you into think I wanted to debate polls.

But as DaytonRocker points out, "Actually, there's quite a difference in these polls. All polls having them tied are counting registered voters. This poll is among likely voters. Quite a difference. I think the debate "win" helped Kerry in the polls, but this poll is more evidence he has a long way to go."

So CJ the Washington Post claiming a five point lead for Bush among likely voters is very important to this debate about who won, for the main goal of the debate was to gain poll points, which Kerry according to the Washington Poll gained very little. And most of it was ex-Nader votes. (2% before the debate, >1% after the debate)

I hope this clears it up.

Just saw Good morning America. The latest ABC poll shows about the same result. The Polls are all over the place.

What truley amazes me is that there is no "set standard" for polling.

There have always been suspect polls and suspect polling organizations almost since so-called 'scientific' polling began. What's different this year is that there are a lot more of them and a lot more money is being given to them.

There are standard methodologies which can closely approximate actual voting patterns, but there are only a few organizations which follow them. Zogby (Democrat) is doing outstanding work, and so is Rasmussen (Republican)...though Rasmussen has been demonstrating a very slightly more favorable tilt toward Bush in his polls over the last week or so, and that tilt isn't being reflected in other polls. He polls exclusively for Republicans, unlike Zogby (who polls for both), and must be under a terrific amount of pressure to 'produce'.

Gallup has fallen on its sword this year by polling 4% to 8% more Republican voters than Democratic voters, depending on the specific poll, and they admit that, even though there are slightly more Democrats registered than Republicans. (In fact, it appears that in some areas, HUGE numbers of Democrats are registering compared to past elections.) Gallup doesn't have a reason for this recent change on their part, either. One can only presume that there is FAR more money being spent by the RNC and the Bush campaign on polls this year than is being spent by Democrats.

Nearly all of the major media polls are just nonsense this year, no matter who seems to win any given poll. They're all over the place from day to day, typically running 7-12% out of range. There are a lot of reasons for this. Some pollsters are simply producing garbage by doing 'push polling', where a respondent is asked something like, "in light of Kerry's lies about his service in Vietnam, as proven by the swift boat veterans, who would you vote for in the election, Kerry or the President?"

Other pollsters are simply not 'normalizing' their results. When polling, it is much easier both to contact Republicans and to find Republicans who have the time to talk, than it is to contact or talk to Democrats. In order to match a poll to the registration demographics, it therefore costs more money because more calls have to be made...and either that won't give the desired result numbers or it's just not an expense the pollster wishes to incur.

Two things are very important to keep in mind about the polls. The first is that so-called 'likely voter' polls are really entirely worthless until the last week of the campaign. The 'likely voter' theory simply relies on previous voting patterns and means nothing until the last week. Prior to the last week, polls of registered voters are the most accurate.

The second thing to remember is that if a sitting president (or ANY incumbent candidate) cannot poll MORE than 50% prior to election day, he simply will not win a two-man election. The reasons for this are two-fold. Incumbent candidates nearly always poll 1-2% higher in the last days of an election cycle than the actual election day results demonstrate. This is because of simple name recognition and the fact that a small percentage of people who waste their time on pollsters still don't take the exercise seriously. They say that they will vote for the man whose name they've heard continuously...and then they vote for his opponent when election day comes. The other reason is that an incumbent candidate will lose almost ALL 'undecided' voters in the few days just before election day. In elections in which there is no incumbent running, this isn't true; but in situations such as Bush/Kerry, it's a given.

So, what's really important for Bush is not that he be ahead in the more accurate polls, but that he has at least 51-52% in those polls. If he has 50%, he'll lose. If he has 51%, he'll possibly win (though it would be a situation very similar to that in 2000), because Nader will strip about 1% of the vote from Kerry in states which are very close.

At any rate, it doesn't really matter if Bush is behind or ahead in the polls. It doesn't matter if Kerry is polling 42% and Bush is polling 49%. If Bush consistently polls 52%, he should win when we actually vote. If he's at 51%, it will be a nearly a dead heat on election day and the outcome will be in question. If he's at 50% shortly before election day, the actual vote totals will be very close to this: Bush - 49%, Kerry - 50%, and Nader - 1%.

Kerry explaining that pre-emptive action had to pass a 'global test' was probably one of his few mis-statements of the debate. But when he explained it, things really got interesting. From CNN



Now that is a Bush-ism coming from Kerry if I've ever seen one. Not just in the globe but elsewhere. Maybe trying to shore up the Star Trek vote.

Clearly, if one heard his response in the debate, and if one has heard or read what he said immediately before and after the sentence you posted, he is saying that he was not talking about some kind of vote of other governments (a poll of nations on the 'globe'), but the ability to PROVE to PEOPLE everywhere that the action he would take is LEGITIMATE.

Just so that I've posted an item on topic:

I was shocked at the debate performance. I watched it intently, and was certain before it began that Bush would turn in a good performance, even though I thought Kerry might do very slightly better. It turns out that Kerry did significantly better than I thought he would, though he did not destroy Bush. Bush did THAT to himself...and that is what was shocking to me.

I've read and listened to far too much punditry on the subject since the debate, and much of it is simply at odds with the reality. Bush's facial expressions and body language at the very beginning of the debate were shouting "I'm intimidated!"

By the half-way point, he had gotten his legs under him and seemed to gain a little bit of confidence, but 5 minutes later he began to appear exhausted and then annoyed. He began to ramble a bit and give answers which were not direct responses to the questions. His responses tended to be halting and sometimes confused and confusing. I've watched him debate on several occasions now, and his usual performance would deserve a solid C grade. This one earned a convincing F.

It has to be the single worst debate performance Bush has ever given, and that wasn't what he needed against someone who not only has a history of winning every debate, but who has been recognized as a very superior debater since his college days. Fortunately for Bush, Kerry's performance was only very good. If Kerry had REALLY been on top of his game, this election would be nearly out of reach for Bush at this point, since Bush personally delivered at least three home run balls to Kerry and Kerry didn't swing at any of them, apparently prefering to follow his pre-debate planning instead.

Hi Rob, welcome to AD

Just wanted to add something to your post for context. The key in understanding Kerry's global test is the ability to establish legitimacy of the pre-emptive action *after* it took place, not as some sort of preliminary "Mother, may I?" to the International community.

The Bush camp has tried many times to spin this into Kerry turning the UN into a wet nurse for our foreign policy and its a pretty simple distortion of Kerry's message. The paragraph before the global test statement delivers quite clearly...


Doc