By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (bannerofliberty.com)
November 1, 2004
According to the polls, President Bush is ahead of Senator Kerry by 2-6 points. In the words of pollster John Zogby, “Let me try to put it this way: It's close! It's close! It's close!"
Following the first debate between Bush and Kerry an Associated Press poll, reported by CNN, among 944 likely voters, showed the Kerry-Edwards ticket led Bush-Cheney 50 percent to 46 percent.
A year ago, in California, in the election which swept Democrat Governor Gray Davis out of office, and Arnold Schwarzenegger into office, I collected some of the poll “predictions” about the Recall. As recently as two days before the election, we were being told in news reports from all over the world that the Schwarzenegger campaign was “deeply troubled by claims he groped women and once praised Hitler.”
In August 2003, the Washington Post reported that in the race to replace Gray Davis, that the Democrat Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante led the pack of 135 candidates with 25% of the registered voters, followed by Arnold Schwarzenegger with 22%. Gray Davis had won the 2002 election with 47.4% of the votes or 3, 469,025 votes in a field of six candidates. His Republican opposition Bill Simon received 3,105,477 votes.
The week-end before the October 7, 2003 election, the story broke, headlined in the California papers, accusing Schwarzenegger of “gropping” women and a Knight-Ridder poll showed Bustamante with 29% of the vote. Schwarzenegger had 36%, a 7 point spread, before the story broke and Governor Davis grabbed headlines by signing into law a bill he said would “provide health insurance to nearly 1.1 million working Californians who do not currently receive job-based coverage” and that “opposition to Gray Davis was slipping.”
At that point, we were told, it was going to be a cliff hanger which could go either direction.
Three days later, Schwarzenegger received 48.5% of the vote, 12.5 points more than even the most optimistic poll had predicted. Republican Tom McClintock received 13.5% of the votes, bringing the total Republican vote for governor in the California recall election to 62%. The leading Democrat in the race, Cruz Bustamante received 31.5% of the votes with the rest of the more than 130 candidates receiving among them the remaining 6.5% of the votes. Schwazenegger’s 7 point lead on October 5, 2003 had somehow become a 17 point lead by October 7, 2003. .
None of the polls came even remotely close to detecting that kind of support for Schwarzenegger and the Republican Party since there were nearly 15% more registered Democrats than Republicans.
I observed at the time in an article following the election: “This is not good news for the Democrats. This is especially not good news for Democrats who believe they can trash any candidate and defeat him or her. It also suggests that Schwarzenegger has given young voters a reason to go to the polls, which, if it continues, will be REALLY bad news for the Democrats. Young voters are mostly independent voters.”
John Zogby reports that “Bush leads with women (Bush 48%- Kerry 47%), juniors 18-29 years old (Bush 55%-Kerry 44%) and seniors (Bush 49% - Kerry 47%).” In other groups, military families, the Bush lead is more dramatic: 57% support Bush. What appeared to have happened in California was a huge turnout of young voters – who voted heavily for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It appears to me that much the same thing is happening in the Presidential election. Certainly in the Presidential race, like the California Recall race, the media favored the Democrats and generally gave wide coverage to Democrat personal attacks on the Republican candidates, with major attacks featured in the last week of the campaign. As in the California race, young voters may vote heavily in the Bush-Kerry Presidential race, which would not be good news for the Democrats. In 2000, some Florida Democratic precincts reported 95% of the voters having voted. Since the rolls had not been purged for several years, a 95% voter turnout indicated probable fraud. A study after the fact revealed that many dead voters voted in Florida in 2000 and in some precincts there were more votes cast than there were registered voters.
If voter fraud is reduced and young people vote in the Presidential election, George W. Bush will not only win but will have fewer Democrats in the Senate to obstruct his appointments and his goals.
To Comment: Mary Mostert