Polling on the Swift Boat Liars

I don't get into the polls too often.  But it is getting closer and closer to a general election, and a presidential election at that.  So we're at the point where they start to mean a little more than at most times.

Did the sleaze-slinging campaign against Kerry waged by the Swift Boat Liars for Bush chip into Kerry's support?  The Gallup poll at the end of last week wasn't finding that to be the case:

No Change in Presidential Race Despite Attack Ads 08/27/04

Despite extensive publicity given to attack ads that criticize Democratic candidate John Kerry's service in Vietnam, a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds no change in voter preferences. President George W. Bush receives 50% support among likely voters, compared with Kerry's 47% -- identical to results in a similar poll two weeks ago. Among registered voters, the race remains a virtual tie.  ...

Although Bush's lead in the current poll is within the poll's margin of error, Bush has maintained this lead in three successive polls, with a combined sample size of more than 2,000 likely voters. This consistency of support suggests that Bush enjoys a real, though small, lead among likely voters nationally.

The race is tighter among registered voters. Kerry receives 48% support to Bush's 47%, while the numbers were reversed in the Aug. 9-11 poll. In the July 30-Aug. 1 poll, each candidate received 48% support. All these results suggest that little has changed since the Democratic National Convention took place in Boston during the last week in July, and that neither candidate has an advantage among all registered voters.

In other words, Bush is showing a small lead among likely voters with a statistical tie among registered voters.  The Gallup findings did not indicate any shift in levels of support for either candidate during the two weeks of heavy skirmishing over the Swift Boat Liars' bogus claims.

The Gallup site has a video on this issue, too.

Ruy Teixeira at his partisan but analytically sensible Donkey Rising blog found the same, including the results of the Gallup poll, in his look at The Race at the Start of the Republican Convention 08/30/04.  He does note that the Gallup poll was unusual in showing a consistent lead for Bush in August among likely voters.  But he takes it as a good indicator of the effect of the Swift Boat Liars, i.e., no change in support levels, because of the comparable types of measurements over the relevant time period.

Teixeira also notes:

In fact--in addition to the horse race--if you look at Kerry-Bush comparisons on issues and on personal characteristics, the results of a number of polls seem almost to replicate the results of that particular poll prior to the Democratic convention.

And another critical thing hasn't changed at all--Bush's ratings in all his vulnerable areas (the economy, Iraq, health care, etc.), as well as voters' sense of whether the country is going in the right direction and whether a different direction is needed. These indicators have all continued to be quite negative (in some cases, have actually worsened) over the course of August, including the period allegedly affected by the SBVT [Swift Boat Liars] controversy.

This is Bush's problem. He's got to run on something and, unfortunately for him, he has precious little to run on other than being the president of 9/11. The SBVT ads and subsequent media feeding frenzy didn't change that equation in the slightest ...

As we saw again and again during the Clinton years, many voters are able to smell the bad odor of a sleazy smear even when our press corps manages to mistake it for sweet perfume.  Not to let the press off the hook, though.