Man Without Qualities

Posted 5:58 PM by Robert

Peggy Said Zogby Said

Peggy Noonan's typically engaging article that appears in OpinionJournal today includes this paragraph:

It is fascinating to me that after two months of the Democratic Party demonstrating what appears to be dynamism, and the Republicans struggling with such questions as the weapons of mass destruction, and the president fighting back charges regarding his military service, the smartest read on where we are came this week from a a Zogby poll that said the Democrats are leading in the Democratic areas and the Republicans are leading in the Republican areas. Mr. Bush's poll numbers are down, but the blue states are blue and the red states are red. And no one knows what will change that.

Current presidential preference polls are inconsistent, to say the least - and Zogby is a particularly suspect pollster. Still, Zogby provides a bit more interesting information:

Democrat John Kerry would edge George W. Bush 46% to 45% in the "blue states" or states won by Al Gore in the 2000 election. In the "red states," or states won by George W. Bush in 2000, however, Bush wins handily by a 51% to 39% margin.

In other words, Zogby says that Bush and Kerry are in a statistical tie in the Blue states, but Bush is leading by a whopping margin of 12% in the Red states. That doesn't suggest a 2000 re-run at all.

UPDATE: More detail.