Evidence that undecideds may break for Bush

Robert Musil exposes the myth that undecideds break for the challenger:

It seems unlikely that the "break towards the challenger" pattern will be nearly as strong in this election as in the past. For one thing, the same factors that favor the challenger in the general election are also supposed to be reasons why the challenger gets a bigger "post convention bounce" than the incumbent. In this election President Bush's post-Convention bounce was clearly much larger than Senator Kerry's bounce. The mainstream media has been saturating the public with their view of the race for a very long time. It is hard to imagine that the public has much new, positive material to absorb about Kerry-Edwards between now and the election.

He cites this 2002 Zogby Poll as evidence that the late-breaking undecideds went heavily for Forida Gov. Jeb Bush two years ago. Zogby had Jeb Bush up only 3 points in Florida on roughly this date in 2002 and Jeb ended up winning handily by 13 points.

Let's hope this pattern holds true again.