politics

Can’t Anyone Here Play This Game?

June 24, 2004

Back in mid-May the Quinnipiac Polling Institute released a New Jersey poll that depicted a close race between President Bush and Sen. Kerry, elevating the state to battleground status. (Campaign Desk later debunked New Jersey’s assignment to the battleground state category.)

Now, Quinnipiac is back with a new poll that shows Kerry widening his lead over Bush. In the poll,which was conducted June 15-20, Kerry won support from 46 percent of the voters, Bush received 40 percent, and Ralph Nader garnered 7 percent.

Yesterday, Bloomberg news highlighted the results in a story covering polls in New Jersey, North Carolina, and West Virginia. The story contends, “Bush is doing better [in New Jersey] than in 2000, when he lost the state by 16 percentage points to former Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic candidate.”

Not so fast, Bloomberg. A look at the June 2000 Quinnipiac poll — which provides a better comparison than the November election results — demonstrates otherwise. In that poll, which included Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan, Bush trailed Al Gore by only four percentage points. Also telling is a comparison of Bush’s favorability ratings from June 2000 and June 2004. In the June 2000 poll Bush netted a negative 4 percent rating (30 percent positive, 34 percent negative). Currently, that number stands at a negative 5 percent (35 percent positive, 40 percent negative). Bush scored well for fighting terrorism, but his overall approval rating in the state sank to an all-time low.

If you add all this up it’s hard to argue that “Bush is doing better [in New Jersey] than in 2000.” At best, he is doing just the same as he did 2000 — which come November wasn’t all that impressive.

Sloppy reporting like this calls to mind Casey Stengel’s wail of lament about the 1962 New York Mets: “Can’t anyone here play this game?”

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–Thomas Lang

Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.