With some Democrats having negative flashbacks to 2004, I thought I would do some research to compare John Kerry's poll numbers in September 2004 to Obama's numbers now. What I found was very encouraging.
This Time Magazine poll from September 10, 2004 was taken at a time almost identical to the one we are in now, politically speaking. The parties had finished their conventions, and the debates had yet to be held. Bush was in the second week of a big poll bounce which he experienced at almost exactly the same point that John McCain experienced his bounce. Except that, as seen below, Bush's bounce was much bigger and more enduring than the one that John McCain is experiencing now.
http://www.time.com/...
Sept. 7-Sept.9 Aug.31-Sept. 2 Aug.24-26 Aug. 3-5
Bush 52% 52% 46% 43%
Kerry 41% 41% 44% 48%
I think it's very important to note that Kerry's favorable – unfavorable ratings in September, 2004 were about even: 43% favorable and 42% unfavorable. This means that a lot of people just didn't like John Kerry, for better or worse. Rasmussen shows Obama's favorable ratings today at 55%, and his numbers have been consistently at this high level:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/...
This obviously means that a lot more Americans like Barack Obama than liked John Kerry. For reasons I can't comprehend, the Time poll showed that Bush's poll numbers in September 2004 were 54% favorable and 38% unfavorable. McCain's unfavorable numbers today are actually 4 points higher than Bush's were in that poll.
The moral of this story is that, in spite of being 11 points down in the polls for two weeks running, in spite of having low favorability numbers, John Kerry came several thousand stolen and/or suppressed votes in Ohio away from being the president of the United States. And he had nothing like the ground game that Obama has, he had nothing like the success Obama has had registering voters, and he had nothing like the ability that Obama has to inspire record turnout among African-American and college age voters.
We are going to win this thing.
UPDATE 1:
In response to a question below, here are some more polls from September, 2004:
This Newsweek post-convention poll had Bush by 11:
http://www.prnewswire.com/...
This CBS poll had Bush by 7:
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
So it's clear that Bush had a much bigger lead at this point than McCain.