ARG Poll: Bush Bounce Bull-Kerry Still Leads

SEP 1 - 15, 2004

VOL. 2 ISSUE 17

AMERICAN RESEARCH GROUP POLL: KERRY STILL LEADING

Poll Taken During Same Period As TIME Mag Poll That Said Bush Was Up By 11 Shows That John Was Still Ahead, And TIME - And The Others - Are Full Of It

by Betsy R. Vasquez

SEPTEMBER 10, 2004 - Pretty amazing, huh?

We told you, they would have the entire media reporting that Bush was leading, playing the same, "Bush is inevitable," tape they ran last election. It seemed unthinkable just weeks ago - now it is the inescapable reality.

All begun by a single poll done by a magazine owned by a Saudi friend of the Bushes - TIME Magazine - the storyline has been sold to all of America.

Even if news sources like CBS and the Washington Post in the end came up with just the same four point bounce for both Kerry and Bush, the media storyline has been night and day. The story dropped on Kerry was no bounce, on Bush, big bounce. By the time the more useful polls came out showing both just got a 4 pointer - if that - the facts were irrelevant.

And now, making the story even better, are the poll results obtained by American Research Group - the group that nailed the primaries and that we have been using consistently throughout this election.

Get a load of the result they obtained even while polling during the Republican Convention - during the same period TIME claimed Bush had jumped ahead by 11 points.

ARG reports: In a poll taken Aug 30 - Sep 1, "among all voters nationwide... Kerry at 48% and Bush at 45%. With Ralph Nader on the ballot, Kerry is at 46%, Bush is at 45%, and Nader is at 3%." (see: http://americanresearchgroup.com/presballot/ )

This one didn't fit the, "Bush bounce," storyline, so it was, of course, ignored. But unlike the rest of the media, we don't choose a different source's poll to focus on each week depending on what fits the story we'd like to tell. We chose Dick Bennett's ARG for how accurately it performed during the primaries and will stick with it throughout the election, since they stick with actual polls and not push poll spin nonsense.

The road to a Kerry landslide continues uninterrupted, despite the free campaign push the non-Moderate Independent media is giving Bush at the moment.

As for the TIME poll having such a different result, Mr. Bennett said he has not looked into the TIME methodology himself, but, "I do know our methodology is sound and consistent. The academic world is working on this and I am told that if the contribution by party for the TIME poll is adjusted closer to the expected turnout, the ballot numbers are statistically even and that's what our poll showed."

In other words, if TIME would have not let their poll give a skewed sample due to the fact that it was taken during the Republican Convention and had adjusted the sample to reflect the actual electorate, it likely would have showed the race statistically tied, as ARG did, not some 11 point lead that fed the press the bogus stories about a big "Bush bounce."

Funny, a magazine as big as TIME forgets this most basic part of polling, adjusting skewed samples to jive with reality? How could a magazine owned by a Saudi Prince friend of Bush forget to do such a basic thing.