Political Notes from Charles Cook

From the Washington Post, an interesting chat/interview with Charles Cook, editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report.

I don't have either candidate anywhere near 270 electoral votes. The only way you can do this is to take state level polling and push states with just one or two point leads into either the red or blue column. Given that a quarter of these polls are complete garbage and another quarter fairly suspect, I think that this exercise is very problematic. Unless someone happens to be privy to the much more sophisticated (and expensive) polling that is being conducted for the two parties, the chances of anyone accurately calling all of the 11 states that we are calling toss ups (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin) are pretty slim. If the margin in this race is more than one percentage point, the Electoral College vote won't matter, if it is inside of one percent, then there are too many states that are too close and the state level polling, even the good ones, won't be of much use, much less these three-dollar state polls that are flying over the internet.

I cannot remember ever seeing a race where a well-known, well-defined incumbent won a half or more of the undecided vote. Generally it is at least two-thirds to three-quarters going to the challenger, somebody was throwing a figure around of 85 percent, don't know if that is right. But as a general rule, undecided voters overwhelmingly break toward challengers, unless the incumbent is relatively unknown, undefined, appointed or something. That's why it is a mistake for people to focus on the spread between the two candidates, the far more relevant figure is the actual vote percentage of the incumbent in a poll (or better, average of polls)

First and foremost, when an incumbent president is seeking re-election, it is a referendum on the incumbent. Having said that, when challengers have been successful, they have tended to be very interesting people, whose message was perfectly suited for the year in which they were running. In 1976, Jimmy Carter was a very interesting person who had a message (integrity, I'll never lie to you) that was perfecting suited for the first post-Watergate, presidential election. Ronald Reagan was a fascinating person with a perfect message and approach for 1980. Same for Bill Clinton in 1992. Kerry isn't the interesting, compelling person that these people were, in the context of the years in which they were running, I think that is a problem. The Kerry campaign is fine, not the best or worse I've ever seen, though they certainly have been making decisions quicker and made better decisions in last month than before. I also think that the Bush campaign is the best planned and executed, most disciplined presidential campaign that I have ever seen, which has helped keep the President afloat when Iraq and the economy have been real problems.

I think that anyone who puts significantly more weight on any one pollster is making a huge mistake. John Zogby is a terrific guy who works very hard and has had some really good years and other years (2002) that weren't so good. There is a web site that has plotted out each of the major national polls on a graph that indicates that Zogby's polls have been a tad more Democratic than most others, just as Fox/Opinion Dynamics tend to be a bit more Republican than the others. Averages are always better, just stick to polls that are done over the telephone (NOT internet) and conducted by real live people, not "push #1 for Bush, #2 for Kerry...) like Rasmussen or Survey USA. They have no idea of they are interviewing nine years old or not.