A Bounce in Bush's Step?

By Ruy Teixeira, The Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation. Posted September 9, 2004.

In this edition of Public Opinion Watch:

• Bush's Convention Bounce Worst Ever for Incumbent President
• Adventures in Likely Voter Land

Bush's Convention Bounce Worst Ever for Incumbent President

The new Gallup poll, conducted entirely after the GOP convention and therefore the first poll that truly measures Bush's bounce, shows Bush with a very small bounce indeed: two points, whether you look at registered voters (RVs) or likely voters ( LVs). His support among RVs has risen from 47 percent before to 49 percent after the convention, so that he now leads Kerry by a single point (49-48) rather than trailing by a point.

Note also that Bush's two-point bounce from his convention (which is defined as the change in a candidate's level of support, not in margin) is the worst ever received by an incumbent president, regardless of party, and the worst ever received by a Republican candidate, whether incumbent or not (see this Gallup analysis for all the relevant historical data). In 2000, Bush received an eight-point bounce. And even his hapless father received a five-point bounce in 1992.

The poll contains other results that suggest the relative ineffectiveness of the GOP convention.

Bush's acceptance speech, which the media fawned over so ostentatiously, was not rated any better by the public than was Kerry's – in fact, it received slightly worse ratings. Kerry's acceptance speech was rated excellent by 25 percent and good by 27 percent; Bush's was rated excellent by 22 percent and good by 27 percent.

In terms of whether the Republican convention made voters more or less likely to vote for Bush – the real point of the convention after all – there were almost as many saying the convention made them less likely to vote for Bush (38 percent) as said it made them more likely (41 percent).

This is actually quite a poor performance. The Democratic convention this year had a substantially better 44 percent more likely/30 percent less likely split. In fact, looking back to 1984, which is as far back as Gallup supplies data, no candidate has ever had a more likely to vote for/less likely to vote for split even close to as bad as Bush's this year.

Well, what about the tone of the convention? Do voters think the Republicans got that one right? Nope. Just 39 percent think the GOP maintained the right balance between criticizing the Democrats and saying positive things about themselves, compared to 50 percent who think they spent too much time criticizing the Democrats. By contrast, in 2000, 45 percent thought the GOP maintained the right balance in their convention, compared to 38 percent who thought they spent too much time criticizing.

But this unfavorable judgement on tone for the GOP this year is not without precedent. In 1992, just 26 percent thought the Republicans maintained the right balance in their convention, compared to 56 percent who thought they spent too much time criticizing. And we know what happened to the Republican candidate that year.

The internals of the poll provide further indicators that the effectiveness of the GOP convention was vastly overestimated by the media. For example, Kerry's lead in the battleground states actually widened over the course of the convention. Prior to the Republican convention, Kerry had a one-point lead among RVs (47 percent to 46 percent) in the battleground states. After the Republican convention, once the battleground voters had a chance to take a closer look at what Bush and his party stand for, Kerry now leads by 5 in these same states (50 percent to 45 percent)! Note that Kerry gained three points among battleground voters, while Bush actually got a negative one-point bounce.

And wait – there's more! The Gallup poll's internals also show that Kerry continues to lead among independents (49 percent to 46 percent) and that both parties' partisans are equally polarized for their respective candidates (90 percent to 7 percent). Note that these findings directly contradict the results of the recent Newsweek poll (see below), which showed Bush doing much better among Republican partisans than Kerry was doing among Democratic partisans. Note also that, given the equal polarization of partisans and Kerry's lead among independents, the only possible reason Bush has any lead at all among Gallup's RVs must be because their sample has a GOP advantage on party identification (my guess is five points) that is inconsistent with almost all other polling data from this campaign season (see below for more discussion of this issue).

Indeed, if equal polarization of partisans continues and Kerry carries a three-point lead on independents into the election, he'll win fairly easily, since the Democratic proportion of voters in presidential elections is always higher, not lower, than the Republican proportion. In 2000, after all, Bush carried independents by two points and received stronger support from his partisans than Gore did from his – but still lost the popular vote by half a point.

Ruy Teixeira is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation.

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