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I see a lot of hate towards the president, but let me give some actual numbers that will give a little better idea of where we stand, regardless of your candidate.
Polls are weird, hard to trust, but there are a few details and historic numbers that can identify trends.
Job approval rating seems to be the most precise way of detecting in advance the chances of a relection of an incumbent.
President Bush: Right now: around 51%
President Reagan in 1984: around 57%
President Clinton in 1996: around 54%
Also, polls always give about a 10% favor to the democrat candidate. The reason is that polling is done by phone and democratic numbers are often predominatly inner city.
This creates an error because inner city people trend to be more of a "likely" voter on the phone, but a smaller chance to wait in line to pull the lever on election day.
During the last election, a poller weighted this in his poll and skewed the 10% away from the democrats (somehow) and he almost hit the nail on the head with his final predictions.
Most closing polls in 2000 had Gore leading by 10%.
What does this mean? It means that if the vote happened today it would probably be somewhere between 55-57% Bush and somewhere around 40% Kerry.
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