Today is the last day of the long 2004 Election season. Living in a “battleground” state has been interesting and tiring. Each of the Presidential candidates kept coming around about once a week for months. Each seems that neither want to let the other have the last visit as if that will matter.
I really feel that most who plan on voting have decided and are ready to draw the curtain in their booth.
I really doubt that a winner will be declared on Tuesday evening. We will have an idea who has the advantage but after the crap we went through in 2000, there will be probably a few weeks as each party tries to manage the problem votes toward their candidate through the court system.
The New York Times published their final poll Monday. If you read the detailed results (available as a PDF file on their website) it is strange. Of likely voters on November 2nd, a slim majority would vote for George Bush. (49 % for Bush and 46% for Kerry). Yet when reading the other questions Bush gets bad marks on handling the war in Iraq, the economy, job creation, and most feel the country is on the wrong track. Yet Bush would get their vote. Why? Because of the campaign against terrorism. Bush actually got good marks on that and people feel he would continue to do a good job although in another question people said the administration mucked things up and didn’t plan the Iraq invasion it well enough. Most thought that was a major part of the campaign against terrorism.
The only bad mark Kerry got was that people felt he said what people wanted to hear rather than what he truly believes. Other than that the respondents had good feelings about Kerry but they won’t vote for him.
The demographics of the sample was they were mostly white, republican, between 45 and 64, and had some college.
I’m not an expert but even though the sample would vote for Bush over Kerry because of one issue, I think the results show Kerry has the advantage. If voters balance their fears with the reason they are voting in the first place, Kerry could come out on top. You vote to pass judgement on how the current occupant of the White House is doing his/her job overall.
The poll results show that the sample would fail Bush on that overall evaluation. And THAT is how we should vote on November 2nd.
