Several weeks ago, a Post poll found that the President had lost his lead regarding the polling question whose better suited to lead on the War on Terror. This was considered front page news. You can find the article here, and my post about the poll, which includes links to a number of folks criticisms' of the poll, here. That certainly was big news, given how large and how long that lead for the President had held.
But I'm just wondering: given that the loss of the lead was front page news, should the fact that he's regained the lead be on page A-9? That's not an easy question to answer. I can't get the hard copy of the paper, of course, so I can't tell what is on the front page (including the critical question: is this article mentioned on that page in a tease?) Although it is a short article. But it is easy to say this much -- the headline surely should have gotten as much attention on the web page as the first headline got, given that cyber space is so much more flexible. And the headline should have referenced that this was the regaining of a lost lead, I think.
Interesting numbers: (I have no idea why the Post is suddenly dumping in all kinds of questions about Latin America, by the way): The issue people care most about is still the economy. But that's because the poll separates the GWOT and Iraq. Had they asked about "foreign affairs and the military," or better, "America's security," I don't think the economy would still be in first place, because those two issues together trump the economy by almost exactly ten points.
The article mentions Kerry's closeness to Bush on "strong leader," but that seems to me to be a proxy for the question that never seems to get mentioned, although the Post asks about it explicitly -- who do you want in charge in a crisis. And on that question, the President does far better. (You have to look at this number as well.)
The question that really hurts is whether Iraq has contributed to the US's long term security. It's still possible for people to determine that the war was worthwhile, but hard to imagine they'll do so on these grounds.
And in fact, Americans do still believe the war was worth fighting. And that's a number to build on. Watch to see if there's media pickup on this one.
Finally, doesn't it strike you there were fewer questions this time around?
The WaPo website put up a picture of their front page every day at this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/image/
They update every night around midnight or so.
Posted by: Thief | July 14, 2004 at 12:37 PM
Thank you! I knew the Times did that, but wasn't wired up on this.
Posted by: dauber | July 14, 2004 at 06:23 PM