Flashback - Presidential Polls May, 2004: “No Way Republicans Can Hold White House”
The Swamp:
You probably don’t remember John Kerry’s 76 electoral-vote trouncing of George W. Bush in 2004. That’s because it didn’t happen.
But a rout of that magnitude is exactly what state-by-state polls were predicting at the end of May four years ago, as reported by electoral-vote.com. Through the magic of the Wayback Machine, you can see that those polls showed Kerry on track to beat Bush 307 electoral votes to 231, including projected victories in Iowa, New Mexico, West Virginia, Florida and Nevada. Kerry lost all those states in November, and he lost the election, too.
The 2004 projections are worth revisiting today because Hillary Clinton is putting similar numbers at the center of her argument to superdelegates that she is better positioned to win the White House this year than rival Barack Obama - and thus should be the Democratic nominee.
“Nearly all independent analyses show that I am in a stronger position to win the Electoral College,” Clinton wrote to superdelegates in a letter this week.
Here’s the crux of that argument: According to electoral-vote.com’s polling data this week, Clinton appears on track to beat Republican John McCain 327 to 194 in November (with 17 electoral votes deadlocked at the moment). Obama, by comparison, leads 266 to 248, with 24 votes deadlocked.
So… what if anything do those numbers mean? Are they more accurate predictors than their May 2004 counterparts? Or, if they’re similarly flawed, do they still reveal a general-election strength for Clinton when compared to Obama?
More questions for superdelegates to ponder - and the rest of us to argue over.
It means never trust polls. The only poll that you can trust is the election. Even then that is a little fuzzy.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:31 am“…Hillary Clinton is putting similar numbers at the center of her argument to superdelegates that she is better positioned to win the White House this year than rival Barack Obama…”.
Like Herpes, Hillary will not go away. She would do or say anything to plant her fat ass in the drivers seat. Unlike some here, I do not admire her tenacity. I think she is incredibly deluded and power hungry. Her ego won’t allow her to accept that Obama, an unknown and inexperienced ‘Utopia-talker’ beat her.
To be fair, I believe she is stronger than Obama but then, I don’t think either has any integrity, honor or any interest in doing what is right for the American people. They are both so idealistic, conceited and vain, they’ll ignore the lessons of history, dragging this country into chaos before admitting they might be wrong. That makes them both extremely dangerous in my mind.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:09 amAnd never, never trust the establishment, agenda-driven media that seeks to create news rather than report news.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:09 amEvery election that I can remember in the last 28 years, the media were all predicting Demorat victories. They were right about Clinton in 1992 and 96, but wrong on all the others; especially in 2000 and 2004. It is impossible not to believe that all of the polls are tilted somehow toward trying to discourage Republican turnout and encourage people to vote Demorat. I’ve seen it too many times to believe otherwise.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:30 amAnd why did this happen? Because the dems found the absolutely most unqualified jackass they could muster and stood him up as the symbol of all that they stood for.
And now they’re stupid enough to repeat that mistake. This is going to be fun…!
May 29th, 2008 at 11:53 amPolls are driven by the Left so, no credibility.
The only reason Clinton won, he got less than 50%, Perot.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:27 pmyeah polls mean nothing and neither do all of these shills on tv saying Republicans dont have a chance. we do need to move back to our base in congress though, i can tell you that much. In my opinion, McCain will win the presidency going away
May 29th, 2008 at 2:01 pm