Gallup Makes It Officially a New Race
In case you missed it, the new Gallup/USA Today/CNN poll (taken October 1-3--after the first presidential debate) has Kerry and Bush tied at 49 among LVs. The last Gallup had Bush up 8; the one before that showed a 13-point Bush lead.
This is significant because Gallup has consistently shown Bush as stronger than most other pollsters, sparking a big debate in the blogosphere about its partisan weighting scheme and other geeky controversies.
The poll's internals include two especially interesting findings. Most of the "character" and "issues" questions show a modest, but not dramatic, trend towards Kerry since the last Gallup. But the poll asked two new "character" questions: which candidate "expresses himself more clearly" (Kerry 54, Bush 41) and "is intelligent" (Kerry 48, Bush 38, with 11 saying "both" and 1 saying "neither"). Could it be that some Americans are beginning to think it might be a good idea to have an articulate and intelligent president? How French of them!
The new Gallup also shows that Camp Kerry decisively won the post-debate spin wars. On the night of the debate, Gallup found that Americans thought Kerry won the contest by a 57-37 margin. In the latest poll, the margin grew to 59-25.
Everything about this poll suggests a dead-even race. It will be interesting to see if Gallup is again an outlier in showing Bush doing relatively well. The next batch o' polls should give us an idea.
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