I’ve been looking at the most recent set of poll compilations from Real Clear Politics. Clearly, the current trends are not particularly good for Kerry and he’ll have to do something to change that.
But I’ve been looking at something else as well. Am I imagining it or is there a periodicity in the sawtooth? My interpretation of that is that it appears to coincide with Kerry campaign surrogates fanning out and hitting the Sunday talking head programs to do damage control. But they haven’t been able to make any real headway—just damage control.
UPDATE: Steven Taylor quite rightly points out that these margins are quite small:
The bottom line for any and all analyses of these numbers: the margins are so small, I am not that any given variation that is within the MOE can be considered significant–nor can it likely be explained by any specific event or issue.
He’s right. It may be my imagination or chance. But I’m willing to bet a shiny new dime that the trend is of concern to the Kerry campaign and that the Kerry surrogates (including the MSM) will be out in force tomorrow morning to turn things around.
That the numbers are giving Camp Kerry heartburn is certainly true–regardless of what is causing the fluctuations.