New poll out shows some interesting things… Two of the more interesting things, I think, are that Kerry gets stronger support from “white evangelicals” than any other group that is expected to be against him (conservatives, republicans, white conservative evangelicals, white evangelicals). Union members and union households are also suprisingly split with ~50% going to Kerry and ~38% to Bush on average in both groups.
Something not particularly suprising, on the other hand, is the strength of the support Kerry is getting. He's lost 5% from his 'strongly favor' column (taking him to only 40%). Almost a third of Kerry supporters (31%) are voting for Kerry because they dislike the other candidates — only 9% of Bush's supporters chose that reason. My impression that Kerry seems to keep going only because he's not Bush seems to be more or less accurate.
Cast an eye over the issues that registered voters most like to hear candidates discuss; only one percent of all Kerry voters want to hear the most about terrorism. Looking at these numbers you get an idea of what the voters (particularly those who have chosen who they're going to vote for) feel to be their candidate's strong and weak points. Kerry's weakest seems to be terrorism, Bush's seems to be education. Keep in mind, however, that this reflects party positions on positions as well: Bush is more likely to do well in foreign policy and all of its offshoots, and Kerry is more likely to do well in domestic issues, just because of the parties they represent. This is somewhat indicated below that where it discusses which (or if both or neither) candidate addresses their preferred issues.
An interesting reflection in results appears in the section where they asked if each candidate were elected, what the terror threat would do. The numbers are virtually identical. There's a strong divide between the parties as to which method of combatting terrorism is more likely to work, and the sides seem to be evenly polarized. However, this information is qualified by the levels of confidence people have in each candidate to effectively fight terrorism. As one might expect, the confidence in Kerry is lower.
Despite the recent media spaz attacks on how horribly things in Iraq are going, more and more people see the invasion of Iraq to have been a good thing, and the rate of opposition has also fallen. Even so, the rate of people who think the situation is going well in Iraq is lower than those who think it is going badly, but the way the numbers are distributed, a number of people who now think it is going badly still think it was the right thing to do. The media, from what I've seen, tends to try to tie the two together, which paints the American public as blowing in the wind. While we may not have the answer, my friend, (heh heh) it appears that the American public is not as wishy-washy about the topic as a certain candidate whom I could name. As a hint, his initials are John Forbes Kerry.
Anyway.
The impression that Bush's prescription plan has actually increased the cost of prescriptions says to me that it's more or less a failure as an opinion thing, at least outside of his base (which goes with my opinion that it was stupid for him to do it in the first place). A majority believes taxes will go up under Kerry, but even more think that they will stay level under Bush (which is probably accurate, barring any major tax reform that may come down the pike in a second Bush term).
The history of Vietnam service is included, with suprisingly level values between the candidates: ~50% of people think Kerry are hiding something, and the same number goes for Bush.
Bush has a higher favorability rating among voters, but Kerry has a higher level of undecided voters (almost twice as many voters are undecided about Kerry as are undecided about Bush).
In general, the rest of it reflects the first part, and public perception: people are more confident in Bush about foreign policy, and in general have more trust that Bush is saying what he actually thinks.
I just realized that was slightly more than two interesting things. Oh well, I didn't realize it was three pages. If you're a geek like me, I'd look thru all of it (I skipped their analysis, 'cause I was busy writing my own, so if this sounds the same, they copied off of ME). For those of you who could care less about this kind of stuff: what are you doing reading this in the first place? Seriously, this is about all I talk about. Come ON.