Cook on Bush's November Chances - Don't Jump Off That Bridge Just Yet

This was taken from www.salon.com.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/08/27/rnc/index1.html
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Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report; political analyst for the National Journal

The challenge for the Bush campaign is to expand its own base, mobilizing more conservative and Republican voters far more than they have ever been energized before, and turning Kerry into a patently unacceptable alternative. But the dangers of such a strategy are obvious. The more a candidate panders to the party base, the more likely they are to antagonize moderate, independent swing voters. When an incumbent president steps out of the Rose Garden, so to speak, and into the gutter, he loses much of the aura and protection that come with the job. Yet President Bush may have no other alternative.

As Republicans gather in New York, Bush has his work cut out for him. While many observers see national polls that have shown the race roughly tied since early April, it does not mean that the two have equal chances of winning.

Historically, we know that well-known, well-defined incumbents rarely win over many undecided voters on Election Day. With this widely accepted dynamic in mind, this year's pool of undecided voters must look especially daunting to Republican strategists. According to five Associated Press/Ipsos Public Affairs national polls conducted between April and early August, 41 percent of the 3,719 registered voters said that the country was headed in the right direction, to 56 percent who thought the country was on the wrong track. Among the 327 registered voters who were undecided in the presidential race, only 19 percent thought the country was headed in the right direction, while 74 percent said off on the wrong track.

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At this stage it seems unlikely that a couple months of good economic numbers, a diminished number of U.S. casualties in Iraq that might remove the war from the nation's news headlines, and three strong debate performances would change the structure of a race that in no way resembles what Bush campaign strategists might have anticipated a year ago. Barring a major external event, a major terrorist attack, a well-timed capture of Osama bin Laden, or some other major international development that unifies the country, President Bush will need to be perhaps 3 percentage points ahead going into Election Day, as he is highly unlikely to win over more than, say, a quarter of the undecided vote.