Sunday, August 01, 2004

Follow the bouncing ballot preference...

Ruy Teixeira, who knows more about polling than I want to learn, takes a look at the Newsweek poll that's being bandied about as evidence of the 'baby bounce' that Kerry got from the Convention.
But, as their story sheepishly admits, half of their poll was conducted on Thursday night, before Kerry had delivered his acceptance speech! Moreover, their results differ on the two nights, with Kerry leading by 2 points in the pre-acceptance speech data and by 10 points in the post-acceptance speech data.

What possible excuse can there be for presenting these data as measuring Kerry's bounce from the convention, when the effect of the most important event of the convention isn't included in half the data? Perhaps there is one, but I can't think of it.
People who actually study these things, as opposed to merely spinning them, are saying it will be sometime next week, or even next weekend, before we can get a true measurement of any statistical bounce. Right now, all the measures seem to be anectdotal at best, and having spent much of the weekend outside the political junkie bubble I too often operate within, I'd say things are looking very good indeed. People who know I've been on the Kerry bandwagon since last year, people whose positions have previously ranged from skeptical to totally disinterested, keep offering variations on "Hey, your guy sounded great! I think we can beat the S.O.B. in the White House."

And, hey, when you're already ahead, any bounce at all is all good.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home