I personally have more reasons to vote against Bush than I do for Kerry, so I'll just pull some numbers out of my butt:

New State Polls

Bush Ahead In Poll of Arizona LV's

Bush leads Kerry 50-39 percent among Arizona LV's, with 3 percent for another party ticket and 8 percent undecided, according to a survey conducted Sept. 13-14 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for Knight Ridder and MSNBC.


Bush Leads By 7 Percent In Two Missouri Polls

Bush leads Kerry 48-41 percent among Missouri LV's, with 1 percent for Nader, 1 percent for another party ticket and 9 percent undecided in a survey conducted Sept. 14-16 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for Knight Ridder and MSNBC.

Bush leads Kerry 49-42 percent of Missouri LV's, with 9 percent unsure in a head-to-head survey conducted Sept. 13-16 by Research 2000 for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and KMOV-TV.


Bush Leads Among NH LV's

Bush leads Kerry 49-40 percent among New Hampshire LV's, with 3 percent for Nader and 8 percent unsure, according to a survey conducted Sept. 13-15 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for Knight Ridder and MSNBC.


Kerry Lags By 7 Among Ohio LV's

Bush leads Kerry 49-42 percent among Ohio LV's, with 2 percent for Nader and 7 percent undecided, in a survey by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for Knight Ridder and MSNBC, conducted Sept. 14-15.


Kerry and Bush Near Tie In WV Heat

Bush leads Kerry 45-44 among West Virginia LV's, with 11 percent undecided in a survey by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for Knight Ridder and MSNBC, conducted Sept. 13-14.

See? The polls are useless.

• a bunch of prominent and respected Republican congressfolk openly criticized the president about the war
• the war got marginally worse in a very visible and terrible and grievous way (the beheading of the American)
• apparently John Kerry spoke this morning at NYU and just knocked it out of the park. plus, CNN broadcast the whole thing
• John Stewart was on Leno tonight, and proved why he is America's key wit and social observer of all things politics. He was able to make fun of W, not seem biased, and be absolutely funny. Leno loved it, and kept baiting him
• Jay Leno came out this weekend as being 'absolutely not conservative" and went on to knock the president on several issues in some magazine article that came to light.
• John Kerry was on Letterman tonight (I toggled between the two) and did a fantastic job. Dave really took to him, and openly wondered if Kerry could get us out of this mess because GW "had us so deep".

Here's a good article on the wide range of poll results so far this year:

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040920-123926-3475r.htm

It also notes that the Harris Poll, the most accurate poll in the 2000 presidential election shows John Kerry ahead by 1 point among likely voters.

The much ballyhooed Gallup Poll which shows Bush up by 13 also had Bush up by 13 in late October 2000 and ahead by 2 points on election day - Ooops!

If you don't trust scientific polls...

Getting a little off topic, I wonder what "scientific" really means in this context. Does this refer to a specific methodology that somebody here can describe? And how do we know which polls actually use it?

Poll results aren't facts, RJ, but they can be indicators.

In this case, most of these poll results are within the margin of error (+/- 3 or 4 points, depending on the poll), but the indications are that it's tight with Bush having a slight lead.

Even with that, though, we need to be cognizant of the fact that polls of "likely voters" are even less reliable than polls of registered voters.

And that the samples used by some of the pollsters, like Gallup and USA Today, are weighted to favor Republicans:

There are more registered Democrats than Republicans in the country, and more Democrats than Republicans have voted in presidential elections since 1992, but both Gallup and UST weight their samples with more Republicans. Once you factor that out, it's at least a tie on numbers, and in many cases gives Kerry the lead.

But hammering the raw (and wrong) results is good politics as it tends to make the leader's supporters feel good, the loser's supporters feel bad, and that's worth something.

But the numbers are still just numbers and do not tell us who will win the election.

In the debates, I believed that the Republicans were just crying "Oh, please don't throw me into the briar patch" with their resistance to three debates. They "caved" pretty quickly so it still seems likely.

Bush is likely to whomp Kerry in all three debates. K's style may work in the Senate - and possibly in a formal high school debate - but that's not what is going on here.

The debates are not debates but rather infomercials. If Kerry's handlers don't get him up to speed on that, and I don't see that they're smart enough to accomplish it, he's going to lose big-time.

I don't think you have any particular insight into the minds of terrorists, but Al Qaeda supports Bush, Hastert and Cheney notwithstanding, so they'll do whatever they think is best for his re-election.

Polls in NJ are showing a tied race. Gore won NJ by 16 points. That cannot be good news for Senator Kerry.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry_sbys.html#nj

Um, Hal, just a question. I don't have any particular insight into the minds of terrorists either, but why would you think that Al Qaeda supports Bush, et al?

Seems to me that after the ass-kicking we gave the Taliban and the ousting of Saddam who had ties to Al Qaeda (yes, it's true, read the bi-partisan 9/11 commission report) that they wouldn't be too fond of Bush.

WE WANT BUSH TO WIN

"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilisation."

"Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected."

polls are nonsense except when they're not, and there's no way to know until after the fact