Since 1992, I have made a habit of predicting the electoral outcome of every state in each Presidential election. I have consistently had good results; e.g., in 2000 I got either 49 or 50 states correct, depending on your opinion of my prediction that Gore would take Florida.

Perhaps I am influenced a little too much here by my own last post, discussing reasons that the polls are probably under-estimating Kerry's results. Over-influenced or not, here goes:

Start with the assumption that Bush wins every state he won in 2000 and Kerry wins every state Gore won in 2000. Since seven electoral votes have switched over from Gore states to Bush states, that would leave Bush ahead by 278-260.

45 states stay the same.

The following states switch from Gore to Bush:

Iowa - 7 electoral votes
New Mexico - 5 electoral votes

The following states switch from Bush to Kerry:

New Hampshire - 4 electoral votes
Ohio - 20 electoral votes
Florida - 27 electoral vote

Total electoral votes
Kerry 299
Bush 239

Popular vote
Kerry 49.5%
Bush 48.5%

The one thing that is clear this morning from looking at the Presidential election polls is that looking at the Presidential election polls doesn't make anything clear. And it's not just that you see Bush leads, Kerry leads, and ties if you look around the polling universe: it's that the trend lines are so very hard to pick out. Some polls, like the Gallup and Newsweek polls, have bounced around like a ping pong ball in a zephyr; meanwhile, the Rassmussen tracking poll has been a very straight snake in a strictly confining tunnel.

I think this year's polls are the least reliable Presidential polls of my lifetime, and it's easy to pick up on several discernable reasons that they are inaccurate. But once you start looking at the actual reasons, enough of those reasons give at least a hint of pro-Bush, anti-Kerry bias that I'm kind of nervously expecting Mr. Kerry to do better in the final results than most of the polls indicate--just like Al Gore did four years ago.

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I like Kevin Drum a lot, and I usually agree with him, but I think he's wrong when he says that "that whole McCain-Feingold deal didn't work out so well." Kevin, ogling a typically screamy press release from the Center for Responsive Politics, complains that "campaigns have more money, the parties have more money, and advocacy groups have more money."

To which I say, so what?

The money itself isn't a problem, it's the lack of accountability. Drum complains about 527s, but they weren't part of the bill, and the FEC was that one that determined that 527s weren't political committees. A lot of those $4 billion came out of my paycheck and millions of other ordinary Americans like me. And that's a good thing, but now the Democrats in particular have to reach out to the masses of small donors rather than depending on a few big shots (yeah, I know, Soros. But I think he's an anomoly). McCain Feingold was never intended to take the money out of politics, it was intended to take soft money out of the parties. And it worked.

Take a look at the CRP's chart of projected spending for the 2004 presidential race:
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I think it's more than plain from what I have written for chez Nadezhda so far that I badly want George W. Bush to lose the upcoming election. That means not just that I won't be voting for Bush, but also that I'm not going to be voting for Ralph Nader or for that Libertarian guy or anyone else that doesn't have a chance of winning. But I haven't given much of a hint as to what I think about the guy I will be voting for.

So now I'd like to talk a little bit about Senator John Forbes Kerry, the man I very much hope will soon become the 44th President of the United States. I'm not going to talk much about his platform or his biography; I think Kerry has done a decent job of introducing himself and his program with his campaign, and if you want to know more about those things, there is plenty of information for you on the Web. What I want to do is talk honestly about my sense of John Kerry the man, born of watching with some interest his entire career on the national political scene, and especially from watching him closely over the last 15 months or so.

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In thinking on what is at stake on Tuesday, I was struck by coming across the same allusion to "careless people" by two very different bloggers:   more »

"The person that sits in the Oval Office will determine the outcome of the war on terror and the economy."

-George W. Bush, speaking to supporters in Michigan yesterday

And unfortunately, he is employing some highly manipulative rhetoric.

As an American, I'm of course deeply worried about new terrorist attacks on my fellow citizens. As a partisan Democrat, I'm dismayed that Osama's surprise resurgence will undoubtedly help re-elect George W. Bush, who in my opinion has greatly damaged America at home and abroad and does not deserve a second chance. Fear of external threats always helps the right wing in any country. I'm also embarrassed that Bin Laden is using tropes from Farenheit 9/11 (which I did not like, for the record), thus providing some unhoped-for ammunition for the GOP.   more »

[UPDATE 10-29-04] by nadezhda

From Jeffrey Dubner at TAPPED:

SITES TO SEE. There are a number of Web sites that you'll want to look at if you're hoping to keep up on the many, many Election Day controversies. A few to note:

* Election Law @ Moritz -- the Web site of the election law division of Mortiz College of Law at Ohio State. This site is simply indispensable for following the legal challenges around the country.
* Election Protection's Election Incident Reporting System -- Election Protection is logging all complaints received by their call center; they've already registered more than 200 calls for Miami-Dade County alone, ranging from the innocuous ("Wants to know where to vote") to the troublesome ("She reported that Haitian immigrants had been intimidated by 'Republican' lawyers").
* Equal Vote -- The blog of Dan Tokaji, one of the professors behind Election Law @ Moritz.
* Election Law Blog -- The news-clipping blog of Rick Hasen, Loyola law professor and co-editor of Election Law Journal.
* Vote Watch 2004 -- An ever-growing list of news clippings about vote suppression, voter fraud, voting irregularities, and the like.

I'm sure I missed a couple sites, so please email me if you know of any resources people might want to check out.

--Jeffrey Dubner

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[original post 10-25-04]
You may have noticed a new nifty button at the top of the sidebar that shows the current projected tally for the electoral college. As of Sunday nite, Bush is up by one, but yesterday it was Kerry by two.

It's a link to Electoral-Vote.com, which has wonderful maps and graphics if you're into that sort of stuff. And they're trying to beef up their servers so they'll be fully prepared for election night.

I wasn't planning to put anything election-related in the sidebar, but the more we learn about extension dates for returning overseas ballots, electronic voting machines crashing, voter registration cards being trashed, and assorted hijinks in GOTV and poll-watching by both parties... well we may need an electoral college vote counter around for a few more weeks or months, not days. And anyway, it's cute.

"Vast amounts of weapons-related material missing, official says." -- seems Knight-Ridder also has inquiring minds

In addition to getting help from some military folks who are defending the guys on the ground from the Washington decisionmakers, K-R seem to have found some folks in the CIA to help them with their inquiry.

The CIA has convened a "mini taskforce" of experts to assess precisely what equipment is gone and what threat it could pose if it fell into the wrong hands, said two U.S. officials.

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Back to politics -- hey, it's less than a week to go. And this is relevant to our ongoing investigation of the prospects for a return to a reality-based US foreign policy. Right?

DonkeyRising has a fascinating piece with internals showing why Bush isn't doing nearly as well with white college-educated men this time around. It's pretty much enough to account for Bush's substantial slippage (down 9 points) with men overall:

In 2000, Bush lead Gore 54-42 among men. Today Kerry lags Bush among men by only 3%, 46-49.

From the analysis by Democracy Corps (the Greenberg Democratic polling firm):

Republican strategies, centered on the war and the military, cultural politics and ideology were meant to solidify the base, but it created a series of problems among the educated men. First, college educated men are increasingly skeptical about the situation in Iraq. Second, educated men question Bush’s approach to the economy, which remains sluggish while the deficits explode. Finally, the cultural politics that are so important to shoring up religious voters have no impact with these socially moderate voters.

White college educated men prefer Bush on foreign policy by only 4 points, down from 15 points in the spring and summer, while white men without a college education prefer Bush by 28 points. White educated men favor Bush on Iraq by only 8 points (down from 20 points) while white non-college educated men favor him by 29 points. Only 45 percent of white college educated men say that Bush has good plans for Iraq compared to 61 percent among white non-college educated men.

Knew those white boys had to be good for something! Now if we could just do something about those security moms.