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March 2004 Election Commentary
From: Michael McKenna
Date: March 8, 2004
Re: The Election and Terrorism
We have attached a summary of the results of our recent survey work examining the election and how terrorist incidents might affect them. The survey was conducted among 800 registered voters nationwide (margin of error is 3.5%). The results pretty much speak for themselves, but we wanted to note a few highlights offer a few thoughts.
• When asked who they would for vote if the election were held today, 47% said Senator Kerry, 45% said President Bush.
• Perhaps more importantly, when asked who will win the Presidency, more than half (51%) said President Bush; less than 4 in 10 (39%) said Senator Kerry. This expectation is important because it affects all sorts of things from fundraising to voter turnout to media play.
• There has been much speculation about what another terrorist attack would do to the Presidential election. Right now, absent other context, it appears that such an attack would result in a net negative for the President. While 29% say that a serious terrorist attack between now and the election would make them more likely to vote for the President, 46% say it would make them less likely to vote for the President. This is despite the fact that only 29% believe that the Administration would be substantially or totally at fault in the event of such an attack.
• Our adversaries in the war on terror have proven themselves to be politically shrewd, so we asked respondents whether they thought the terrorists had a rooting interest in the presidential election. Sixty percent of the respondents thought that the terrorists would prefer Senator Kerry as president; just 25% indicated that the terrorists would probably prefer President Bush to remain . If that is a correct assessment of terrorist preferences, taken in tandem with the previously mentioned results, it suggests that the terrorists might contemplate another attack prior to the election as a way of altering the electoral terrain.
Interestingly, few respondents (just 15%) responded "neither" or "don't know" to the question about which president the terrorists might prefer. We expected many more respondents to refuse to answer that question.
• While Senator Kerry holds an 8 point edge (49%-41%) with respect to who would do a better job with the economy, the President holds a more expansive lead on who would keep the country safer (53%-37%). As we careen into election season, we think these two sets of numbers will tell the tale.
It is interesting to note that Senator Kerry gets especially high marks among women on the economy (who split for him 52%-37%). At the same time, about a quarter of self-identified Democrats (and even 16% of those planning to vote for Kerry) say that President Bush will keep the country safer.
• We have contended for some time that candidates must cross a threshold on national security issues before they will be considered acceptable candidates for the Presidency. It appears that Senator Kerry has crossed that threshold, with more than half (51%) of respondents saying that he will be tough enough on terrorism. Again, we expect that the Bush campaign will seek to change this number during the course of the campaign.
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