Public Opinion Watch: August 2-29

In this edition of Public Opinion Watch:

(From polls and related articles from August 2-29, 2004)

• The Race at the Start of the Republican Convention
• Voters Still Thumbs-Down on Economy

The Race at the Start of the Republican Convention

The Myth: The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) controversy seriously harmed the Kerry campaign. Bush comes into his convention in much better political shape than he has been for quite a while.

The Reality: The race has changed little since the start of the SBVT controversy. Bush enters his convention with basically the same political vulnerabilities he had previously.

Let's go to the numbers. The poll that best provides a before-SBVT damage and after-SBVT damage picture of the horse race is the Gallup poll. That's because Gallup polled both on August 9-11 – right before media coverage of SBVT really heated up – and on August 23-25, right after the coverage peaked and just as the Kerry campaign began its push-back.

What do the Gallup numbers show? As Gallup's release on their latest poll succinctly puts it: "No Change in Presidential Race Despite Attack Ads.” Just so.

In fact, to the extent their numbers show change, it's in the opposite direction to the one everyone is assuming. In their August 9-11 poll, Kerry was behind by one point (47-48) among registered voters (RVs); in their August 23-25 poll, Kerry's ahead by a point (48-47). (Bush's approval rating also declines by 2 points between the two surveys).

So why were (and are) people so convinced SBVT hurt? There were the Annenberg Election Survey numbers, of course, on how many voters had heard of the the SBVT charges (more than half the country) and found them somewhat or very believable (46 percent of the group that had heard of the charges). But, as numerous observers have pointed out, outside of the ranks of partisan Republicans almost all of these “believers” were those that found the charges “somewhat,” rather than “very,” believable, indicating little more than a willingness to consider the charges rather than a firm belief they are true. And these data were collected prior to the Kerry campaign’s push-back on the issue; later Annenberg data indicate that the controversy, in the end, did not change the number of voters who believe Kerry did not earn all his medals. In addition, a plurality of voters now believe that the Bush campaign was behind the SBVT attack ads, despite the SBVT contention that they were acting independently.

Then there were the August 23-25 Gallup numbers on likely voters (LVs), showing Bush ahead by 3 points, that fed the impression Bush was pulling ahead. But these LV numbers also represented no change from previous Gallup polls, which had showed Bush ahead among this group by about the same margin. (Indeed, it's interesting to note that in the entire month of August only one poll – Gallup – showed Bush ahead among LVs in the Bush-Kerry matchup and it did so three times and by almost identical margins. Must be something going on with that Gallup LV model.)

There was also the Los Angeles Times (LAT) poll, which showed Bush with a 3 point lead among RVs, released right after the peak of the mudslinging. But the LAT poll had no point of comparison in August, much less close to the beginning of the SBVT controversy, so the LAT result showed nothing about change due to SBVT. Moreover, the LAT result was an outlier among the month's RV polls – every other poll taken during the month (save one Gallup poll) – had Kerry tied or ahead in the Kerry-Bush matchup.

Finally, there is the most plausible – in my view – source of this sentiment: the fact that a number of polls show a tightening of the horse race between very early August (i.e., right after the Democratic convention) and late August. That tightening ranges from 2-7 points, turning a small post-convention Kerry lead into a smaller Kerry lead or tie, depending on the poll. But the most plausible hypothesis for this tightening is a natural post-convention decay in Kerry's support (given a lack of fresh, positive coverage of Kerry's campaign) over the course of the month, rather than the specific effect of the SBVT brouhaha on voters’ evaluations of Kerry.