Poll: GOP Boosted By SkyBomb Bust; Dem Advantage Narrows To Within Margin of (t)Error
UPDATE: Among "Regular Voters," Contest Is Pure-Straight Deadlocked

The long predicted (dreaded) terror effect finally goes bump in the night:

The arrest of terror suspects in London has helped buoy President Bush to his highest approval rating in six months and dampen Democratic congressional prospects to their lowest in a year.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, support for an unnamed Democratic congressional candidate over a Republican one narrowed to 2 percentage points, 47%-45%, among registered voters. Over the past year, Democrats have led by wider margins that ranged up to 16 points.

Two points? Two points? I wasn't going to flaming skull it, until this sunk in.

Two points.

Democrats ahead in polls by two points means Republicans win by three.

Now 42% of Americans say they approve of the job Bush is doing as president, up 5 points since early this month. His approval rating on handling terrorism is 55%, the highest in more than a year.

The boost may prove to be temporary, but it was evidence of the continuing political power of terrorism.

I'm so happy I'm pissing my pants.

Note this was a weekend poll, too, generally considered to skew Democratic.

Looks like the American publis isn't quite so blase and blithe about the prospect of megaterrorism as our tough, brave Timing Questioners on the left.

The left's attempt to denigrate, dismiss, and trivialize a thwarted terror attack that might have killed 2000 people or more seems to have failed. Spectacularly.

Because, perhaps, as Allah says: Normal people just don't read blogs.

PS: While this is front-page, above-the-fold news on USAToday's print edition, it's not on the front page of the web edition.

There are more moderate tech people that can be hired to do these paper's online editions. From the NYT's web guys giving that misleading caption of the bombed-building suddenly-"dead"-dude pieta to this... well, as Kaus says, two incidents make a trend. And the trend seems to be that the MSM's online staffers are even more liberal than the staff at the print editions.

UPDATE! mrp looks into the full poll results and finds:

If one checks out the "complete results" of the poll, then you'll find that "regular voters" (those that claim that they always vote) are perfectly divided 48-48 on Question #2. (+/-5 pct. MoE.)

(mrp's post corrected from 42-42 to 48-48, as the chart indicates.)

posted by Ace at 09:50 AM

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