New Jersey's turning purple
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| Thu, 09-16-2004 - 1:04am |
THIS POLL RESULT, IF ACCURATE, IS STUNNING
http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerry200409152029.asp
So, how much is all this media focus on Dan Rather hurting the Bush in the presidential race?
Well, SurveyUSA has Bush head of Kerry, 49 to 45.
In New Jersey.
Is this possible? Well, according to Dales, Quinnipiac had Kerry by ten back on Aug. 23.
But Rasmussen had Kerry by 4 among 400 likely voters in Sept. 3. Rutgers/Eagleton had Kerry by two on Sept. 2. And Strategic Vision, a Republican pollster, had Kerry by three on September 12.
It will take another poll or two to confirm that Bush is ahead. But this last bunch of polls suggests its time to take New Jersey out of the “safe Kerry†pile and into the “toss up†pile.
UPDATE: What could be bigger than Kerry's lead evaporating in New Jersey? How about it crumbling in Illinois?
The turn in this election tide could set up a political stunner. Illinois is a Democratic powerhouse in national elections, and John Kerry does maintain a small lead in our exclusive CBS 2 poll, but President Bush appears to be gaining support among voters.Illinois no longer looks like a sure thing for Democrat John Kerry. His once 13 percentage point lead is now down to four points. That's exactly our survey's margin of accuracy, meaning the contest could be a dead-heat.
Renee ~~~

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In IBD/TIPP's first poll of likely voters, conducted Sept. 7-12, both men garnered 47% in a two-man race and 46% in a three-way race. In the latter scenario, independent Ralph Nader would take just 3% of the vote.
Among registered voters, Kerry holds a two-point edge over Bush, with or without Nader, the poll found.
For polls taken after Labor Day, pollsters consider "likely voters" a more accurate indicator of actual election outcomes.
IBD/TIPP defines likely voters as adult Americans who say they are very likely to vote in November, have a high level of interest in the presidential election and have voted in every or nearly every presidential election.
dablacksox
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
If they showed a 1 point or 2 point lead for Bush, then this new poll is insignificant.
I can quote the new TIME magazine poll from Sept 10 that shows that Bush's lead actually grew from 11% to 12%.
I can also show the NEWSWEEK poll for the same period that shows that Bush's lead which was 10 after the convention reduced to 8%.
The other thing about the polls, is how the pollsters set the questions up.
The partisan ones tend to shy away from people that are not providing the answers they are looking for, but generall Gallup, Zogby, Quinnipiac, Rassmussen, etc dont do stuff like that...those are generally run by local establishments.
from SUPERFUND MAN
http://www.motherjones.com/news/hellraiser/2003/01/ma_220_01.html
Bob Spiegel was working as a pastry chef at a banquet in 1991 when the ice sculptor at the affair asked him a question that sounded like something out of an old Monty Python routine:
"Want to see some green rabbits?"
Spiegel followed his co-worker to the nearby site of the Chemical Insecticide Corp., an abandoned factory in Edison, New Jersey, where a toxic mix of arsenic, lead, PCBs, and dioxins had been left behind. "There were green rabbits," Spiegel recalls, still amazed by what he witnessed a decade ago. Residue from an herbicide called dinoseb, banned by federal regulators for causing birth defects, had given the undercoats of rabbits living around the sprawling plant an eerie green tint.
Spiegel was even more alarmed to discover that children were playing in nearby streams contaminated with chemicals from the site, which was already designated for cleanup under the federal Superfund program. If the rabbits were turning green from the chemicals, he wondered, what about the kids playing there?
...
Two years ago, the wetlands association finally hired Spiegel as its first executive director. ("He worked full time for eight years," explains a board member. "We decided it was time to pay him.") At the time, it looked like Spiegel's years of activism were about to pay off -- the final phase of the cleanup was set to begin last fall, with $40 million budgeted for soil removal. Then, in June, lawmakers learned that the Bush administration planned to cut Edison and 32 other Superfund sites from the budget, postponing cleanup for years.
••••
Here's more on Bush and the Superfund:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,213010,00.html
Superfund Gets the Super Shaft
The White House wants taxpayers to fund cleaning up industrial waste. Expect a fight in Congress
By JESSICA REAVES
RYAN HASLER/AP
Signs blocking the entrance to an EPA Superfund site
Monday, Feb. 25, 2002
President Bush is shifting his environmental policy into high gear, leaving environmentalists more than a little nervous — and putting some business leaders in an awfully good mood.
Two weeks ago, the White House unveiled a new policy on global warming that rejects many of the fundamental principles of the Kyoto treaty and emphasizes self-regulation by business. It also, importantly, waives pollution controls during economic slowdowns. Now Bush wants to change the way government has funded environmental cleanups since the Reagan era. And his proposed changes may prove to be something of an amnesty for many corporations penalized under the Superfund sites.
The New York Times reports that Bush's 2003 budget proposes to slash the Superfund's primary source of income — a tax aimed at industrial polluters that once generated about $1 billion a year. The onus for paying now shifts to the taxpayers, who will cover $700 million, or more than 50 percent, of the fund's budget. The White House also advocates curtailing the roster of sites covered by the fund, down from the current 1,551. What's the logic behind the cutbacks? Bush staffers tell the Times that there aren't any manageable sites left to clean — only the "megasites" remain, and they're simply too tough to tackle, especially without adequate funding.
The Superfund was established in 1980 as a mechanism to force industry to pay for their toxic spills and general pollution, after years of growing public concern over toxic exposure. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG), a watchdog organization in Washington, D.C., estimates that one in four Americans lives within one mile of a Superfund site. Soon, that may not be the case — and not necessarily because things have been cleaned up, but simply because there just isn't enough money allocated to tackling our pollution problems.
The reported budget proposals don't come as a complete surprise; over the past few years, the burden of Superfund expenses slowly shifted away from corporations and over to taxpayers. Still, says Grant Cope, staff attorney at USPIRG, Bush's decision is a momentous shift that bodes ill for the future of Superfund.
"I think this marks a major shift in overall policy," Cope says. "Remember, the last three Presidents, including Bush senior and Reagan, were all in favor of renewing the corporate Superfund tax." Neither the first Bush nor Reagan administrations could ever be accused of being anti-business, but the current Bush administration wants to rewrite that policy to save corporations up to $1 billion per year in taxes.
Now Bush will have to sell his budget to Congress, where, says Cope, the President's opponents could try to force a reversal on Superfund. Democrats are ready to fight, but they're pessimistic about their chances. A White House victory would likely bring an immediate drop-off in the number of sites approved for Superfund status. But of even greater concern to environmental advocates is that the change will see the disincentive to pollute wither away alongside the Superfund coffers. After all, industrial polluters been kept in check by the threat of having to fund costly cleanups.
Is a rating of 49% (bearing in mind an incumbent with a public approval of less than 50% has never before won an election) really good news for the Bush camp??
The national review is a conservative publication.
They are trying to polish a cowpatty here.
In NEW JERSEY, 49% for a REPUBLICAN is a steaming hot fire engine red cow patty.
National Review's political point of view is only relavent if they are distoring the facts or lying about them like that other biased media outlet, CBS.
Renee ~~~
Renee ~~~
Bush is not polling above 50% consistently.
No incumbent President with less than 50% popular support has ever won re-election.
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