Bush's lead - how solid?

[jim_vh]

Bush looks to have a very comfortable 65 electoral vote margin (http://www.slate.com/id/2106527/) over the 270 needed for a win but polls are different for incumbents (http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8694) .

Almost all poll reporting focuses on the “spread,” that is, the difference in the percentage supporting Bush and John Kerry. If we take an average of the most recent ABC/Washington Post, CBS/New York Times, and NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys, it shows Bush with 49 percent and Kerry with 44 percent among registered voters. Such survey results are invariably reduced to the shorthand “Bush up 5,” which sounds like a comfortable lead.

However, in incumbent elections, the incumbent’s percentage of the vote is a far better indicator of the state of the race than the spread. In fact, the percentage of the vote an incumbent president receives in surveys is an extraordinarily accurate predictor of the percentage he will receive on election day -- even though the survey results also include a pool of undecided voters. Hence the 50-percent rule: An incumbent who fails to poll above 50 percent is in grave jeopardy of losing his job.

[bideau]

At this point, Bush may not even have the lead. In national polling, Kerry is even or ahead in many polls. The state by state poll data is certainly more important. But the poll data you cite is very old (by election standards). Every state poll was pre debate.

The bottom line is that this race will be as close as the last one. The remaining debates are critical and the pressure is on both candidates not to screw up.