What did the national pre-election polls indicate?
According to most observers, most pre-election polls put George W. Bush slightly ahead of John Kerry. The summary of “final trial heats” at pollingreport.com shows Bush ahead in 10, Kerry ahead in 3, and one tied. (The average margin was Bush +1.45%.) Among the “pollster vote projections” (in which the pollsters may make subjective judgments about how undecided voters are likely to vote), five favor Bush, two favor Kerry, and one is a tie. (For what it is worth, both projections favoring Kerry are attributed to Democratic pollsters; one projection favoring Bush is attributed to a Republican pollster. So among nominally neutral pollsters, Bush was ahead in four projections and tied in the fifth; the average margin was Bush +1.3%.) Please note that every single one of these polls yielded a result within its statistical margin of error, even assuming that the polls were otherwise perfect. So they certainly don’t justify high confidence that Bush was “really” ahead, much less that he was d
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