PhotoDude.com

Tue. Aug 31, 2004

Convention Prediction: More Red Meat!

You’ll find a roundup of posts from the various bloggers covering the Republican Convention at RNC Bloggers. That’s where I found David Adesnik writing about a “Blogger Breakfast” with “Matthew Dowd, a top strategist and spokesman for the Bush campaign.” David’s question for Dowd?

You said that this convention is going to focus on the President’s vision for the future. But given that most voters judge an incumbent based on his record, not his plans, might that indicate a lack of confidence in what Bush has accomplished? As Ronald Reagan memorably asked in both 1980 and 1984, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?

On a related note, voters’ habit of judging a candidate based on his record explains why undecideds tend to break for the challenger at the last moment. Do you agree with the consensus and does that mean that Bush has to go into election day with a 2 or 3 point lead in order to win?

Here’s what Dowd said: His research shows that voters do tend to be retrospective, but that they care about the state of the nation more than the state of their pocketbooks. Also, they tend to vote on the basis of the past year, not as Reagan suggested, the past four. Thus, the recent economic recovery may help the President. Finally, those who lean toward a candidate but aren’t sure about supporting him do want to hear about the future.

When it comes to the undecideds, Dowd said that undecideds are traditionally those voters who haven’t had access to a lot of information. But this year, both campaigns have already far outspent their counterparts in the last incumbent-challenger race in 1996. Thus, if people haven’t made up their mind, it probably means that can’t decide and aren’t going to vote.

I have to be honest with you. When I first read that last paragraph, I burst out laughing. This is a “top strategist” for the Republicans? In a campaign that has seemingly gone on forever, where both sides have spent a couple hundred million on ads, and we are inundated with low ball tactics and media spin … undecideds “haven’t had access to a lot of information”?!? What insular enclave has Mr. Dowd been living in? And do they have an extra room for me? I could use the peace and quiet.

But the last sentence is the killer. He believes those who haven’t decided by now probably “can’t decide and aren’t going to vote.” That’s a statement that should surely rise up and bite the ass of any “top strategist” foolish enough to believe it, if there is any justice at all in the world.

What I think I hear him saying is that they’ve already written off the undecideds. The reality is that there’s currently about eight or ten states where those undecideds will truly make the difference in the electoral college results. And if 90-95% of “likely voters” are already committed, that means you have an incredibly small group to target, perhaps 100,000-250,000 people spread across a handful of states.

More and more, it looks to me like they’ve run some math on this, and made a decision to cast aside the traditional approach. Rather than tack to the center to try and scoop up the handful of undecideds who are diverse and hard to read, they’ve decided it will be easier for them to tack hard right and focus on increasing the turnout of their base, to try and make Republicans come out of the walls and show up at the polls. People have mentioned how the Bush campaign has kept “to the right” longer than is usually done before the traditional shift to the center for the last months of the campaign. I think it’s been delayed … because it isn’t going to happen.

And therefore, until November, we will all be served a strict diet of red meat. After I finish laughing, I think I’m going to throw up.

And not that it matters at this point, but the latest Zogby poll has some interesting findings from 501 “undecided likely voters” (I won’t even comment on the first oxymoronic question in the poll asking how “undecided likely voters” ... would vote). 77% disapprove of President Bush’s performance on the job, 56% think the US is headed in the wrong direction, 53% would like to see “Someone New” as President, and 87% “Wish for Other Candidates.” 54% prefer to read a newspaper on the Internet rather than in print (counter to Mr. Dowd’s belief about a lack of access to information), and 63% think it is “Very Likely” or “Somewhat Likely” that the 2004 presidential election outcome will be disputed.

In other words, we’re not a very optimistic bunch. And words like those of Mr. Dowd just make us mutter more.