Publicly Released Studies

Released: Tuesday, September 7, 2004

On the heels of the Republican National Convention, President George Bush appears to have gained a two point “convention bounce,” but overall the race remains a dead heat.

The most striking result from the ICR Presidential Election Poll of September 1 – 5 is the continued shift of vote share away from Kerry and towards Bush within registered independents. Also of interest is an increased likelihood of respondents to say they are certain they are going to vote.

Overall, the race for President is still neck and neck. Based on registered voters who are certain they will vote, 48.2 percent say they will vote for George W. Bush, 47.3 percent for John Kerry, and 4.1 percent for others or undecided:

The Race for Independents

The ICR press release of August 14th reported a substantive lead for John Kerry among registered Independents. This was in sharp contrast to August, 2000, when the last Democratic nominee for President, Al Gore, trailed in this important population by nearly 10 points.

However, since that time there has been a sharp erosion of preference for Kerry amongst this critical population. In fact, within this population Bush now holds a significant lead (47.7% to 36.9% with a 8% margin of error), in sharp contrast to one month ago:

America Decides to Vote

Over the past week there has been a significant increase in the number of registered voters who now way they are certain to vote. Overall, this number has increased by six percent (84.8% of registered voters). Importantly for Kerry, there has been a 10.3% increase among African Americans, and comparatively, more democrats are being added to the roles of certain voters than Republicans:

Methodology

This poll was conducted as part of ICR’s twice weekly consumer omnibus study, EXCEL. A total of 1,015 interviews were completed with adults aged 18+ from September 1 - 5, 2004. The results presented above are based on registered voters (79% of the sample) and have a margin of error of +/- 3.5%.