A couple of recent polls, for what they're worth, have shown Bush ahead of Kerry.
Some/many in the liberal blogsphere seem to be pretty depressed about this, but essentially all the polls are showing, for now, is that the race is a dead-heat. The day-to-day back and forth of the polls doesn't show a lot. If all the polls showed Bush opening up a lead in polls taken a month apart that might be cause for concern, but the signal:noise ratio in the recent polls is pretty low.
The real story as Ruy Tuxeria points out is the steady erosion in issue-by-issue support for Bush. This, rather than the headline numbers now, will probably be reflected in later movement in the polls. Pretty simply, on the right track/wrong track and favorable/unfavorable ratings, the polls all indicate that there's a share of the population that may still be saying they'll vote for Bush, but are very willing to consider another candidate.
It's a truism of almost all democratic systems that elections are a referendum on the incumbent. Oppositions don't win election, government's lose them. This of course plays out in presidential elections in different ways than parliamentary ones (Bush would never have made it to the top in a parliamentary system ...) but is true nevertheless. It's also true that you have to have a challenger/opposition that is able to take advantage of the presidents/government weaknesses.
Posted by robe0419 at April 22, 2004 4:19 PM