AP-Ipsos Internals are self-contradictory and strange: the Bush electorate went fickle last week, and is rock-solid for Kerry now, or so AP says
Here’s their release, and there’s a pdf as well, on the poll which has a Kerry 4% lead, 50% to 46%. I haven’t studied it in depth yet, but from what I have seen, it looks plain weird to me. First of all, the sample is said to be 46/46 Dem and Rep (with leaners), which is very low on Independents.
One Debate an Election Makes — for Kerry
The voters seem to have gone all a-twitter at JFKII in the first debate, with 27% now less favorable towards Bush, and a whopping 39% now more favorable to Kerry — why bother with campaigning at all if 90 minutes can do this:
That 46% of Republicans, it seems, has been just waiting for the siren song, or should I say chanson, from a Democrat to make their move.
Every man, woman, and child, and demographic sub-group now loves Kerry
At least that’s what AP-Ipsos says:
– Seniors – support for Kerry has risen from 36% to 55% now;
– Women age 45 or older; a majority now favor Kerry (53%, Bush 42%), where last month the race was a tie (Bush 49%, Kerry 46%);
– Rural voters – Bush’s majority has softened substantially (54%, from 68%);
– Independents – Kerry support is at 56%, from 41%;
– People with the lowest household income – 63% now back Kerry, up from 47% in September;
– Generation X voters – a majority now prefer Kerry (55%, from 44%) over Bush (42%; 56% in late September);
– Battleground states – the advantage is now leaning toward Kerry (41% Bush, 54% Kerry), whereas last month Bush had the momentum (51%; 45% Kerry).
Let’s just pause a moment here, to take in the nonsense that AP is shoveling, before moving on to the next section and their completely contradictory finding. Those flinty rural folk have dissed Bush 14% in two weeks. GenX has moved 19%(!!!!) in two weeks — I think Kerry does a cameo in Halo II in his SwiftBoat. Those crazy gals over 45 have had hot flashes or something that has caused them to swing by 14% to Kerry. That Kerry is bigger than Sinatra in 1940!
Fickle 10 minutes ago, but rock-solid now
On the other hand, the fickle group that just massively changed their minds after the debate are now rock solid in their choices, with only 4% of Bush supporters and 7% of Kerry supporters open to further revisions:
So we are expected to believe that, based on seeing John Kerry for some part of 90 minutes, 25% now like him a whole lot better and Bush a whole lot worse, and that now they have massively changed their positions, and that now those positions are totally, immovably locked in. Okay then.
Big Problem
Folks, I wouldn’t waste too much time on this poll.
(1) Here we are, in October, and supposedly the likely and registered voters, of whom 46% are Republican (or leaning), are giving the following answer to the generic Congressional question: they favor Democrats 48/44! This is just nuts for several reasons, including that there is a zero percent chance of congress going Democrat, as well as 2% of the 46% “Republicans” in the sample appear to want Democrats to control Congress.
(2) As previously noted, the fact that so many voters were swayed by one 90-minute debate, yet are not susceptible to further persuasion, suggests that there is something deeply amiss. One wonders, for example, about the methodology of the poll. Nornally, AP-Ipsos selects 1000 people to poll. Here, they polled 1541 (an extremely suspicious number), including a very high 14% with graduate degrees, 63% with no children, 31% 18-34, 82% who watched some of all of the debate, and 36% from the South. You get the feeling that they stopped polling when they got the results they were looking for.
I think they serve magic mushrooms to the folks at AP-Ipsos. Just don’t you swallow any of it.