The Command Post
2004 US Presidential Election
« Iowa Futures Contracts | Main | John Kerry's Secret Weapon: Michael Whouley »
January 16, 2004
| Kerry, Zogby and Iowa (Oh My.)

On "Meet the Press" this Sunday, host Tim Russert asked Sen. John Kerry about the latest Zogby poll at the time, which showed Kerry was still trailing by a significant margin heading into Monday's Iowa Caucus. Kerry said he wasn't impressed by the numbers:

I don’t even accept those polls. This is the same pollster who had Democrats winning every race in the Senate last time and they lost them all. Look, the polls are all over the place. We have very different polls from those. Yesterday, in Iowa, I had 1,000 people at two different rallies. Dean had about 200 with Al Gore. We’re moving out here. We have a lot of energy out here. The people of Iowa are independentminded. This isn’t about polls. This is about people.

It'd be interesting to know if Kerry is feeling a little more charitable toward Zogby this morning. That's because according to the pollster, Kerry now has a significant and growing lead among likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa:

Kerry - 24 percent support
Howard Dean - 19
Richard Gephardt - 19
John Edwards - 17 percent

Kerry has picked up nine percent support in Iowa in one week, while Dean has lost six percent and Gephardt has lost four percent, according to the Zogby numbers.

(Cross-posted at Late Final.)



Posted by latefinal at January 16, 2004 09:49 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Gotta give Kerry some credit here, he’s taken a seemingly DOA campaign and absolutely turned it around this past week in Iowa.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the national numbers start to shift as more people actually start paying attention.

Posted by: Joe Maller at January 16, 2004 01:51 PM

How about polling outfits that suddenly call Iowa too close to call are doing so because they have serious doubts about the veracity of their past efforts?

+/- 4% is already a huge window of precision for a statistical statement especially in light of how many different polling outfits have gotten involved in Iowa.

If they suddenly ‘discover’ it’s a tight race, the media automatically run with that as their lead.

Pre 9/11 media tactics; cover the excitement over the substance every time.

I predict that whoever wins in Iowa does so with at least a ten percent advantage over their nearest rival…and that no media will devote more than a passing remark as to how ‘out’ the polling was.

Remember 2002? Many of the races that went Republican were ‘too close to call’ in the week before elections, too, and ended up being seven to fifteen point victories.

We’ll see, won’t we?

Posted by: TmjUtah at January 16, 2004 04:22 PM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (Click here should you choose to sign out.)

As you post your comment, please mind our simple comment policy: we welcome all perspectives, but require that comments be both civil and respectful. We also ask that you avoid the extensive use of profanity, racist terms (neither of which we consider civil or respectful), and other boorish language.

We reserve the right to delete any comment, and to prohibit you from commenting on this site, if we feel you have broached this policy. As a courtesy, we will first send you an email noting a violation so you understand the boundaries. This will occur only once, however, and should we ban you from our comment forums we expect that ban to be permanent.

We also will frown upon those who suggest that we ban other individuals for voicing unpopular opinions, should those opinions be voiced in a civil and respectful manner. The point of our comment threads is to provide a forum for spirited though civil and respectful discourse … it is not to provide a forum in which everyone will agree with your point of view.

If you can live by these rules, welcome aboard. If not, then we’re sorry it didn’t work out, and thanks for visiting The Command Post.


Remember me?

(You may use HTML tags for style)