When I was in law school, I wrote an opinion piece for the school paper on how polls are used to manipulate public opinion. The basic premise is this: there are truly undecided voters and then there are about 10% of voters who are squishy-types in our society. These individuals are the ones who really want to be liked. They will wait until the very last minute to make up their minds and will probably vote based upon a mystical amalgamation of a) who they think will win and b) who they think there friends are voting for. This leads to the types of strange momentum swings we see in the last few days before elections.
If I am right that Bush has a solid base of between 45-47%, he needs to hammer away at Kerry's soft voters. Bush will build a 4-6 point lead on Kerry by hammering him enough to peer back some of that soft support. IIn October, I would expect to see numbers like Bush 46 - Kerry 42, etc. The dems will spin that as Bush still being in trouble because he is below 50% and hasn't broken out of his base.
The squishy voters will see that Bush is ahead in the polls and decide that he will probably win, and therefore jump on the bandwagon. This movement will be helped by talk throughout the country of a positive economy and backlash against vitriol and hatred from the left.
In the end, Kerry will get most of the truly undecided voters, but Bush will get most of the "squishy" voters--the ones who want to vote for winner. These are the same folks who seem to have a baseball cap for every.
