By Charlie Cook, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004

It is always nice to make a prediction that turns out to be accurate, but sometimes you make one that ends up being even more on-target than you expected. Just about the time that Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts was announcing his selection of Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina to be his running mate, top Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd released a memo predicting that, based on historical patterns, the Kerry bounce from both his running mate announcement and the Democratic National Convention would be about 15 points.

The bottom line is that this presidential race is not over, but the outlook is not so great for the players in the red jerseys.

At that point, I wrote in National Journal magazine that Kerry's bounce would likely be less than what Dowd was predicting, suggesting that given the incredibly high degree of polarization, Democrats had already "come home" to solidly back Kerry, just as Republicans are locked into Bush's column. This ensures that any movement would be limited to the narrow ranks of independent voters, thus a smaller bounce.

In recent Gallup polling, President Bush has routinely pulled between 85 and 90 percent of the Republican vote, while Kerry has ranged between 82 and 89 percent of the Democratic vote. With each side's share of their party's votes moving in fairly narrow ranges, there is very little room for a bounce. Bush has picked up from 33 to 40 percent of the independent vote, while Kerry's share has run between 43 and 47 percent.

[See NationalJournal.com's Poll Track for complete WH 2004 polling numbers.]

Dowd has a unique job that is part pollster, part strategist and part high-quality spinner. Indeed, he has become the Peter Drucker of political expectations management. But it seemed to me -- and to many other people -- that Dowd was setting the bar for Kerry's bounce unrealistically high, making the Democrat almost destined to fail to reach it. This is not meant to knock Dowd at all; he is doing his job, and I would do the same if I were in his place.

Until next week's convention is over, we won't know what kind of bounce Kerry will carry with him from Boston, and how much ground Bush will have to make up with his own bounce after the Republican Party's pre-Labor Day convention in New York City. But when Kerry picks the only Democratic running mate who seemed to "move the needle" and the needle still only budges a few points, that tells you something about how stable this race is -- and, for that matter, how it has been for months. The 45-45 percent tie, with each candidate fluctuating about three points up or down from that point, has been with us since April, though beneath the surface there have been some shifts. While some polls have shown Bush's approval rating on handling the economy to have improved a bit, those gains have been offset by a comparable decline in his approval ratings on handling foreign policy, the war in Iraq and even, to a lesser extent, terrorism.

Last week in this space, I discounted the widely held view that the knotted polling numbers between Bush and Kerry meant that the race itself was even. I argued that given the fact that well-known incumbents with a defined record rarely get many undecided voters -- a quarter to a third at an absolute maximum -- an incumbent in a very stable race essentially tied at 45 percent was actually anything but in an even-money situation. "What you see is what you get" is an old expression for an incumbent's trial heat figures, meaning very few undecided voters fall that way.

A recent survey by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio (Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates: July 6-7, 1,000 likely voters in 19 battleground states), underscores my point. Fabrizio's poll shows that undecided voters in those states have more pessimistic views than all voters in those states. Just 23 percent of the undecideds say the country is moving in the right direction, compared with 40 percent overall. And just 21 percent say the economy is in excellent or good shape, compared with 33 percent of all voters in those states. Those who are undecided are also slightly more apt to disapprove of the job Bush is doing as president, 46 percent to 40 percent.

This is certainly not to predict that Bush is going to lose, that this race is over or that other events and developments will not have an enormous impact on this race. The point is that this race has settled into a place that is not at all good for an incumbent, is remarkably stable, and one that is terrifying many Republican lawmakers, operatives and activists. But in a typically Republican fashion, they are too polite and disciplined to talk about it much publicly.

In a funny way, if this race were bouncing around, it would probably be a better sign for President Bush. It would suggest that there was some volatility to the race and that public attitudes had not yet hardened, and were thus still an eminently fixable situation. The dynamics of a presidential race usually do not change much between July and Election Day. This year, however, the race is much more stable than usual, which is ominous for an incumbent under these circumstances. The bottom line is that this presidential race is not over, but the outlook is not so great for the players in the red jerseys.

Charlie Cook, a NationalJournal.com contributing editor, is the founder and publisher of the Cook Political Report. This column, which also runs in CongressDailyAM when Congress is in session, appears each Tuesday morning. In addition, Cook writes a weekly column for National Journal magazine. His e-mail address cookreport@nationaljournal.com

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