DescentBB

Goob, do you suppose Kerry supporters have stopped coming to the board or to this particular forum? I haven't noticed any mass exodus from E&C, but then, I don't actually keep statistics on who visits or posts.

Consider this alternative possibility: as the anybody-but-Bush crowd has now become somewhat more informed about what a waffle Kerry is, many have decided they can't support him. They're not going to vote for Bush, but they're not going to vote for Kerry either. So it seems a more relevant extra poll option might be "American formerly for Kerry but now for neither". I imagine that category will continue to grow as the election nears, while "American for Bush" will hold steady... and the same will be true in the general public.

I've seen some interesting poll numbers recently about why people support the candidates they do. Among Bush supporters, about 95% said they supported him primarily for some policy, philosophy, or position of his, and only about 5% supported him for reasons like "he's not Kerry". Among Kerry supporters, though, only about 40% supported him for any policy, philosophy, or position while about 30% supported him because "he can win" and 30% because "he's not Bush". When you consider that the two are nearly in a dead heat in the polls overall, I think that spells a crushing victory for Bush -- because "he can win" doesn't get people enthusiastic and out to the polls, and it doesn't win swing voters.

Bush has his supporters locked in pretty tight. Almost all of the people who are for Bush right now will be for Bush in November. Kerry doesn't have a strong lock on his supporters -- a lot of people are for him right now, but by November a fair chunk of them will be voting 3rd party or staying home. We're seeing the beginnings of this play out on the board right now.

Not many people are going to switch from Kerry to Bush. Not many people are going to switch from Bush to anybody. But a lot are going to switch from Kerry to Nader, and probably even more from Kerry to sitting-on-the-couch. This is bad for Kerry's campaign.

Maybe we can petition to add additional poll options to cover the Neither, Third-party and I'm Not Going To Vote crowd for the next time this poll is taken.

I've seen some interesting poll numbers recently about why people support the candidates they do. Among Bush supporters, about 95% said they supported him primarily for some policy, philosophy, or position of his, and only about 5% supported him for reasons like "he's not Kerry". Among Kerry supporters, though, only about 40% supported him for any policy, philosophy, or position while about 30% supported him because "he can win" and 30% because "he's not Bush".

I don't really care for this poll because the thirty percent option for (Kerry) "he can win" shouldn't be there for two reasons.

First, it only pushes back the real question of "why do you want him to win", which seems to me, the entire intent of the poll.

Also, it is unfair to have two options for one candidate and three for another. Naturally the one with just two options will have a higher percentage in the more dominant issue of voting for him because you agree with him!

(Actually, for a third, I think it's entirely possible to vote for Kerry because "he is not Bush," and still agree with his policies. So its implication that 40% of the pro-Kerry agree with Kerry's policies while 95% of the Pro-Bush agree with Bush's policies is just plain wrong.)

There are lies, damn lies, and then statistics -Mark Twain

Regardless, Kerry to Nader may be an issue, that one may explain it instead of my theory. I doubt Kerry to couch does. Not in this election anyway.

Goob, I think you misunderstand my summary as being the actual poll. You're right, my summary would have been an unfair poll -- if you gave 2 options for Bush and 3 for Kerry, and one of the options for Kerry was "he can win" and that was left out for Bush, it would be an unfair poll.

But the poll actually asked people "why do you support this candidate?" as an open-ended question. They gave their reasons themselves, so the "not Bush" / "he can win" responses were straight from their mouths as their own primary reasons for voting. I was summarizing it from memory, and I apparently did a poor job of it (but I had the gist of it right.)

Here are the actual results. I'm going to summarize by positive ("I like this guy" or "I agree with him on some issue"), neutral ("default party-line" or "not specified"), and negative ("I don't like the other guy").

options for Bush wrote:Doing good job as president 30%
Character/Values 23
Positions on the issues 15
Strong Leader 11
Iraq/Saddam 5
Republican 6
Not Kerry 3
Tax cuts 2
Other 2
Donâ??t know/Refused 3

86% are positive reasons for support (doing a good job, character/values, tax cuts, strong leader, Iraq)
11% are neutral reasons (Republican, Other, Don't know)
3% are negative reasons (Not Kerry)

options for Kerry wrote:Not Bush 27%
Positions on the issues 20
Democrat 14
Character/Values 8
Iraq 2
Intelligent 2
Elect-able/Can beat Bush 11
Strong Leader 7
Veteran/Military Service 3
Other -
Donâ??t know/Refused 6

42% are positive reasons (positions, character/values, Iraq, intelligent, strong leader, veteran)
20% are neutral (Democrat, Other, Don't know)
38% are negative (not Bush / can beat Bush).

Now, of course, you'd expect there to be more "not Bush" than "not Kerry" voices -- but what impressed me is that the "not Bush" voices are more prevalent than "positions on the issues" (I want to ask how the 20% "issues" voters found out what Kerry's positions even *are*, but that's for another thread.) I certainly don't mean to imply that those who give their primary reason as "not Bush" don't also agree with Kerry -- just that they see "not Bush" as more important than whatever agreement with Kerry's positions they have.

Here's the kicker: they asked how enthusiastic you'd be voting for one of these candidates, on a scale of "enthusiastic", medium, and "I'll have to hold my nose" (with other, third party, and don't know as possible options.)

Kerry voters were 50% enthusiastic, 30% medium, and 16% hold nose.
Bush voters were 68% enthusiastic, 22% medium, and 7% hold nose.

So yes, I do think "Kerry to couch" is a strong possibility here. People simply aren't enthusiastic about voting for him. My own reading in E&C seems to validate that -- we have just as many Democratic-leaning voices as we did a month ago in this forum, but fewer and fewer are saying anything positive about Kerry at all, and more and more are leaning third-party or not even participating. Very few have ever said they like where Kerry stands on the issues or they like his character. Some people are enthusiastic for Bush, some decide unenthusiastically to support Bush or Kerry, and some are voting third-party... but Vander is the only person I can remember coming out and saying he likes John Kerry because of his positions on the issues.

In conclusion: I stand by the conclusions of my prior post. Kerry-supporters-leaving-E&C probably doesn't explain much of the poll changes. Kerry-to-Nader and Kerry-to-couch probably do. And I can't blame them -- Kerry simply doesn't strike me as a guy people will be very enthusiastic about. Anybody-but-Bush will get people to vote who would've voted for the default Democrat anyway, but it's not going to get swing voters to bother getting out of their seats, and it might not even get moderate-to-center Democrats to the polls.

[spoiler]To summarize what Lothar just said...*whispers* "pwned"[/spoiler]

Yes Ty, especially since he never explicitly stated that he was summarizing a larger poll, and then also wrote,

I was summarizing it from memory, and I apparently did a poor job of it

The poll still seems to be fishing for responses. (Actually the second poll, because as Lothar said about the first one,)

I certainly don't mean to imply that those who give their primary reason as "not Bush" don't also agree with Kerry -- just that they see "not Bush" as more important than whatever agreement with Kerry's positions they have.

I agree. Now according to the second poll,

Kerry voters were 50% enthusiastic, 30% medium, and 16% hold nose.
Bush voters were 68% enthusiastic, 22% medium, and 7% hold nose.

It is still framed in the aspect that the previous poll indicated would be favorably to Bush. Do you doubt that if a similar "enthusiasm" poll asking, "How badly do you not want to see the other guy in office" that Kerry would still be lagging behind? As the other poll established, (this is his poll not mine), we seem to hate Bush more then those who love Bush Hate Kerry (Hate is really the wrong word, but you get what I mean. As a man I respect him for doing what he thinks is right.) So one could conclude that many republicans would then go to the couch if they just focused in on that one option!

My point, is that neither Poll is capable of showing the extent of each sides enthusiasm for having their vote heard, regardless of why. Perhaps you cannot understand this, but as a Democrat I tend to hate Bush more then I love Kerry. I tend to think Bush is reckless, I think classifying yourself as a "war-president" is in bad taste, I wont go on, but another thread (and at a later time). So most of Lothar's own polls do accurately reflect how I feel about this election, but implying that this indicates that I don't care could not be further from the truth!

And here is "the real kicker" I wouldn't even rate myself as enthusiastic for Kerry! I would probably have listed medium.

It is true that this election seems to be centered on Bush. He did a lot that pissed people off, especially considering how many don't believe that he should have been president in the first place! Becuase of this I wouldn't be surprised if this bitter taste left in their mouth drove them out in much higher then expected percentages.

So it is only natural that for this president the republicans would have to rally around him. While democrats feel more of the need to rally against him then they do to rally around their own candidate. So I believe that saying that just because the Dems are 18% less "enthusiastic" about voting for their guy implies that they wont participate is a bit premature. Especially considering that the previous poll indicated that one of their main reasons for voting is to remove Bush!!

and thats where the fallacy of "Anyone but Bush" starts showing up when at this point Kerry is the only other real option. Why remove bush when he's resolved to finishing what we've already started. Because you don't like whats going on? aww....we're too deep in the ★■◆● now to quit anyways. New president or not...

If you replace Bush with Kerry, you potentially could make the situation worse by allowing Kerry to continue his flop-flopping antics and allowing the US to be a HUGE target opportunity to groups who do not like us. Being that if we withdraw now, the jihadis will have believed they've won a battle against the great satan and just further fuel their attacks WITHIN the United States.

Personally, if that ever happend. John Kerry is the LAST man I'd want at the helm of this country. If there should be anyone to be President after Bush, that man would have to finish the job if even just reluctantly. He must be resolved to finishing what Bush has started and I just don't see Kerry doing that.

Bush didn't ask for 9/11. We may have had a completely different President if the circumstances had been different. He reacted in the way he thought necesarry, right or wrong, it's our duty as a nation to see it through instead of pulling away and turning our heads from the problem. We've done that far too often.

If given the chance, I thought Lieberman would have made a good President to follow up Bush. He strikes me as a guy who would see this thing through and bring us out on the good side of things. but...we'll never know.

Why remove bush when he's resolved to finishing what we've already started.

Being that if we withdraw now, the jihadis will have believed they've won a battle against the great satan and just further fuel their attacks WITHIN the United States.

that man would have to finish the job if even just reluctantly.

it's our duty as a nation to see it through instead of pulling away and turning our heads from the problem.

Um, Tyranny, I can only imagine that you don't know this from your last response. But Kerry is opposed to leaving Iraq. In fact this is one of Naders strongest differences between the "big two" for acquiring new votes.

I honestly don't think you have listened much to Kerry.

Why remove bush when he's resolved to finishing what we've already started.

I love the "we've" already started. It's great that Bush is resolved to finishing what he started, but so is Kerry.

Incidentally, Lieberman was who I was also hoping would win. But sadly, he would have had less of a chance then Kerry.

I've actually been paying close attention, more so then at any time in my life, and I know I don't like Kerry. He's too two-faced even for his own party, so his claims to finish the job are hallow IMO. It's only cannon fodder for his election campaign.

He's the "take it up the ass" man. He'll do or say almost anything if it makes him look good to certain people or to avoid revealing 'certain' facts about his past. Bush on the other hand doesn't give a rats-ass about what people think of him now that he has been President. He is focused on doing what he feels is right, not what some guy behind the curtain is telling him to do for the sake of Public Relations.

Gooberman wrote:Sixty minutes, last week on NPR.

Sorry, but fox news doesn't report everything

So you ASSUMED that since I am a conservaitve that I automatically have FOX as my ONLY news source?

What if I assumed that you had no brain?

no, I "ASSUMED" that you would realize a sarcastic remark will receive one in kind. You made very similar "ASSUMPTIONS!!!11!1!" in your initial comment.

Welcome to last week by the way.

Gooberman wrote:no, I "ASSUMED" that you would realize a sarcastic remark will receive one in kind. You made very similar "ASSUMPTIONS!!!11!1!" in your initial comment.

Welcome to last week by the way.

Touche, Mr. Gooberman.

But why in the HELL does it matter if I post now or in the next week? Last time I checked this was a BB and not a chat room.