In one of our international phone calls this morning, my father pointed me to the fact that a new poll from Newsweek has Bush at a all-time low of 42%, his lowest number ever in any poll I have seen (Bush was momentarily at 43% in a Pew poll some time back, but that was a blip). Continuing evidence that Bush’s drop is still going.

Still, when the poll looks at Bush vs. Kerry, it has Bush down by only 1 percent–Kerry gets 46%, Bush 45%, and 9% are undecided. But as Zogby points out, most of the undecideds go to the challenger and against the incumbent. Further, Andrew Kohut has an editorial in the May 12 New York Times that gives a possible explanation as to why Kerry is not yet taking off:

The real reason that Mr. Kerry is making so little progress is that voters are now focused almost exclusively on the president. This is typical: as an election approaches, voters first decide whether the incumbent deserves re-election; only later do they think about whether it is worth taking a chance on the challenger. There is no reason to expect a one-to-one relationship between public disaffection with the incumbent and an immediate surge in public support for his challenger.

Which makes sense and is in line with the coverage in the press, which is all about Bush these days, with Kerry stories much fewer and far-between.