I think it’s hard for the electoral-vote calculus to look good when you’re down by 2-3% in the polls overall, which is probably where Kerry stands right now. Bush just barely managed to pull off a (disputed) EC victory in 2000 when down in the popular vote by 0.5%. It’s theoretically possible for a candidate to win in the EC while losing in a landslide in the popular vote, but I’d be astounded if Kerry was able to win the EC while being down 3% in the popular vote. It impresses me that he’s able to stay reasonably close in the EC, despite his trailing nationally.
But if Kerry pulls even in the polls (and not just one poll here and there, but in the balance of the polls that have remotely reasonable party ID in their sample), I think that’ll move states from the ‘narrow Kerry lead’ to the ‘solid Kerry lead’ category, and move other states from narrow Bush leads to narrow Kerry leads. If the popular vote’s decided by less than 500K, my money’s on Kerry in the EC.
I disagree. A Democrat can’t win the EC without winning the popular vote, because their strongholds are the urban, populous states, which are under-represented in the EC model.
If Bush does win, I think the election aftermath would be much less if Kerry wins FL and Bush wins Penn and OH. At least there would be less hanky waving polluting the airwaves. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I won’t be forced to listen to NPR at work for 8 hours a day after the election this time around… “And now we devote 3 hours to taking calls about people pissed off about the election results. Our first call is from Jane in Boston…”
Well, it’s their reasons- or at least the reason why we suspect they did this. The French are percieved as a bunch of cowardly surrender-monkeys, who didn’t want us to go into Iraq as they were making scads of money from Saddam & their weapons sales to the anti-USA 3rd world Moslem nations. Note that the Germans didn’t want us to go into Iraq either, but that didn’t hurt them in the polls much AFAIK.
The polls continue to show the elction is “too close to call”. The GOP is sweating blood, and I think Kerry is moderately happy with his numbers- but he certainly could be happier. Remember, he is a virtual unknown, going against an Incumbent. Normally, this would be a McGovern or Dukakis style election, with the Incumbent leading by huge numbers.
I predict an extremely close Election, with many many challenges. Basicly, right now the only “poll” that really shows Bush in a solid lead is the fact he can likely pull 5 votes in SCOTUS, where I confidently predict this election will end up. There will be whole precincts where the voting machines show completely screwy results.