I pointed out on April 22 that Kerry appeared to be ahead where it really counts--in the battleground states--despite Bush's small national lead. Here's confirmation of this pattern from a just-released Marist college poll: while Bush is ahead of Kerry by 3 points nationally among RVs (47-44), Kerry is head of Bush by the same exact margin (47-44) in the battleground states.

In addition, the poll asks the following slight variant on the traditional right direction/wrong track question: "In general, thinking about the way things are going in the country, do you feel things are going in the right direction or that things are going in the wrong direction?" The public as a whole gives a 46 right direction/50 wrong direction response. But in the battleground states the public gives a substantially more negative 40/55 response.

Another interesting finding from the poll is that Bush gets a relatively weak job rating of just 55 percent on handling the war on terrorism. And in a just-released Pew poll, Bush gets an identical 55 percent job rating on handling terrorist threats. I continue to believe that these declining job ratings in Bush's strongest area are of great political significance and provide Kerry with the opening he needs to make his case on national security issues.

Of course, he's still got to make it, starting with the mess in Iraq. Right now, according to the Pew poll, only 36 percent believe Bush has a clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion, compared to 54 percent who think he doesn't. That's Kerry's cue to step up with just such a plan. I agree with what Josh Marshall had to say in his recent New York Times op-ed:

....running a campaign that focuses the voters' gaze solely on the president's manifest failures will probably run into resistance, especially with the voters he most needs to win over, those from the ambivalent middle. Mr. Kerry is far more likely to win if he has a plan to show how he — and thus the American people — can succeed rather than simply showing how President Bush — and thus they — have failed.

And it's going to call for more than a "secret plan to end the war", as Nixon was able to get away with. Sure hope they're working on this one down at Kerry campaign HQ.