Brain Fertilizer

Bush got just about half the votes in the last election.

Now, four years later, what's going on?

Q and O has this, saying Bush is picking up all sorts of votes among white females, blacks, Jews, first-time voters, and veterans*.

The Kerry Spot says has Zogby saying Bush has mobilized his base more effectively than last time.

Despite the Old Media not being able to find any, the Democrats For Bush phenomena is, by most accounts, stronger than the Republicans for Kerry movement.***

Now, unless you assume that Bush is only picking up the extra votes from people who didn't vote last time around**, shouldn't that translate to a landslide victory for President Bush? The percentages truly seem to indicate President Bush getting something close to 60% of the vote, which seems ridiculous on the face of it.

And here's some more evidence that Bush is going to easily defeat Kerry: Up by 5 points in heavily-Democrat Michigan?!??!

...and yet, Mickey Kaus keeps going over implausible scenarios of ties, and if you scroll down over the last week, keeps talking as if the "undecideds break against the incumbent" historical trend will deliver the victory to Kerry. And Rasmussen has the candidates well within the margin of error.****

That just doesn't seem possible.

I know there is some dispute on polling practices, i.e., Democrats tend to answer the phone more often during typical polling time periods, so to eliminate that influence the pollster has to "weight" the results in line with traditional Democrat/Republican percentages, but even the extent or direction of the weighting is in dispute.

The editor of Newsweek said the media is worth 10-15 percentage points of votes for Democrats, because of liberal bias. And an even more strong historical trend than the "Undecideds Break Against the Incumbent" one is that people tend to not vote if they think their candidate is going to lose. Combine those two ideas, and it becomes more clear why the Old Media is insisting Kerry is still in the race.

I'm still thinking the final results are going to be very surprising...an unwelcome surprise for Democrats, indeed.

*and hispanics, according to other sources not covered in this post

**which doesn't seem likely because Bush is picking up percentages of populations, not just numbers.

***which is supported by logic, as well, since any campaign that has a significant movement like Kerry Haters for Kerry can't be drawing that much support from Republicans. I've gotta think that the Republicans For Kerry movement is actually Democrats claiming to be Republicans to try and sway voters...you know, like Michael Moore claiming to be an Independent, or Andrew Sullivan trying to insist he was undecided until just recently?

****But they also show the President's Approval Rating is above the supposedly crucial threshold at 52%.