Newsweek says seven point bounce

Although it is not the way they spin the story, the real news is right there in the opening paragraph:

Respondents who were queried after Kerry's Thursday night speech gave the Democrat a ten-point lead over Bush. Three weeks ago, Kerry’s lead was three points.

The spin of the article is that Kerry got himself a four point bounce, which would still be pretty good for such a tightly contested election. Donkey Rising's Ruy Teixeira takes issue with the bounce reporting of the article.

What possible excuse can there be for presenting these data as measuring Kerry's bounce from the convention, when the effect of the most important event of the convention isn't included in half the data? Perhaps there is one, but I can't think of it.

And that's not all that's wrong with their bounce measure. To make their sin even more egregious, the previous poll they use as a point of comparison is way too long ago (July 8-9) to be a real before/after comparison. What if the race was closer before the convention than it was on July 8-9? Then using July 8-9 as a point of comparison would further contribute to understating Kerry's bounce from the convention.

Back to the Newsweek article:

Voters are deadlocked at 46 percent over who they would trust more with handling the situation in Iraq (Bush had enjoyed a 15 point lead in March). They also just barely prefer Bush to Kerry (48 percent to 43 percent) on handling terror and homeland security, issues on which they had preferred the president by 21 points in March. This is significant because the top issues among voters are terrorism (21 percent), the economy (19 percent), Iraq (18 percent) and health care (15 percent).

Kerry gets higher ratings as someone who can be trusted “to make the right decisions during an international crisis” (53 percent Kerry versus 48 percent Bush). Six in 10 voters (58 percent) are dissatisfied with the direction the country is headed and, domestically, more voters believe Bush’s policies have hurt (43 percent) rather than helped (33 percent) the economy. Voters also feel they would far more trust Kerry (55 percent) than Bush (32 percent) with issues pertaining to health care and Medicare.

Also Bush's approval rating falls again. All good news for Kerry, regardless of the poll time.