National Review’s Kerry Spot says the Bush campaign’s internal polls show that W has a solid lead in Florida, outside the margin of error. Some public polls differ, but I am inclined to agree with the Bushies that Florida is probably going to end up in their camp. The trend has seemed to be in that direction.
More disturbingly, Michigan now clearly appears to be unexpectedly in play. This is very bad. Kerry obviously must win Michigan (and Pennsylvania, though that seems to be less of a problem).
If Kerry holds MI and PA, the race comes down to Ohio — or at least, that’s the conventional wisdom. Everybody says that if Kerry wins Ohio, he wins the election, and if Kerry loses Ohio, he loses the election. The second part of that equation is almost certainly true (unless he pulls an upset in Florida), but as to the first part, well… I did some math, and even if Kerry wins MI, PA and OH, Bush can still win the election if he wins a) two out of three in Wisconsin/Iowa/Minnesota; or b) Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico (though Option B would leave him with only 270 EVs and thus vulnerable to a Richie Robb defection throwing the election to Congress). Note that “Oregon” can also be substituted for “Iowa” with the same results, and “Hawaii” can be substituted for “New Hampshire,” though both of those seem somewhat less likely.
The most plausible of these scenarios is probably Iowa and Wisconsin both going red. How much would that suck — Kerry wins Ohio, but Bush becomes the first Republican ever to win a presidential election without the Buckeye State because Kerry can’t hold onto two Midwestern blue states.
Even so, Ohio is clearly the #1 state to watch. And with the youth vote especially unpredictable, watch out for the Ohio State University factor. Electoral-vote.com writes: “Let’s call Ohio a tie. Which way it goes will almost assuredly depend on the turnout Tuesday, especially among younger voters. Could OSU elect the next president? It is not out of the question.” Hey, they do have like 40,000 students, right? Let’s hope they’re feeling “blue,” so to speak. And motivated to actually freakin’ vote.
P.S. Can Kerry, if he wins Ohio but loses Florida, prevail without Michigan? Yes, but in addition to holding Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon and Hawaii, he’d have to pick off New Hampshire and one additional red state: Nevada? West Virginia? Arkansas? None of those look very likely right now. Or else he’d need the Colorado referendum to pass, and be upheld by the courts. Again, unlikely. Or, if the referendum fails but he wins Colorado, that would do the trick even without New Hampshire. But, yet again, that seems unlikely.
Is it too late for me to move across the border to Michgian? I’m only a few miles away… :)
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Categories: Election 2004
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October 28th, 2004 at 4:23:08 pm
I’m telling you, that stuff about new voters is rubbish. Despite the intentional and bogus draft scare that the Kerry side is pushing, I guarantee you that the youth vote will not be A. momentously in favor of Kerry/Democrats more so than previous elections (if anything, I expect Bush to do better than usual, given the recent poll results of high schoolers and such), and B. much larger percentage-wise than is typical of presidential elections.
No, the numbers you should be focused on is minority turnout–particularly African-Americans. If the black vote goes as projected (lower turnout than 2000, Bush doubling his share to 15-18%), Kerry is in deep, deep doodoo.
October 28th, 2004 at 5:18:08 pm
A., I dunno about the Youth Vote specifically but I do say the overall “new voters” hoopla & reported raw numbers thereof are being exaggerated as usual (though probably to a lesser degree than usual because there IS a 1992-like Surge here), for the following simple reason: a lot of the New Voters are (as always) not New. They are Old. :) THEY HAVE MOVED. They hadn’t bothered re-registering until now. They are newly On the list in their New jurisdiction, Off in their old one. Not First-time voters.
Thus, the iconic New Voter: Brendan Loy, D-IN. On there, Off in CT. Net gain, zero. (Well. Some in CT may think it a Plus but very few I’m shure… :)
Oh sure a lot of them ARE truly new, also. But far, far less than All. This — plus the fact that many Old voters are now Off the rolls since the last-previous purges & reports because they have Died & gone either to Heaven or to The New York Times :) — is why journalists are always Flabbergasted to find that the net Total Registered Voters, and its net increase (if any) from the previous Presidential, and thus the raw-number Turnout, is Less than they Expected.
Now as for your Afro-Am Vote pipedream, fuggedaboudit. :) The Community will turn out in massive numbers for Kerry and Bush’s share will remain Stuck in the Single Digits. :)
October 28th, 2004 at 5:36:00 pm
If Kerry were in Deep Doo-Doo because of a massive Bush surge in the African-American vote, I fail to see why that would not be showing up in the form of large Bush leads in the Deep Doo-Doo states. If such a surge is happening, it seems it’s being offset by a Kerry surge elsewhere, according to the polls, which show the race being quite close in places like Ohio, Florida, etc. etc.
October 28th, 2004 at 5:54:49 pm
Andrew sent me a link in which Mystery Pollster wrote (granted, a week ago):
…In every poll which has released results for some definition of “battleground” states, John Kerry runs slightly stronger against George Bush in those toss-up states than he does nationally….John Gorman of Opinion Dynamics noted that his survey for Fox News showed a similar result: “One odd factor is that much of the lead is concentrated in the so-called ‘red states,’ which were pretty much conceded to Bush at the beginning. Thus his national lead does not reflect a big lead in the battleground states that will decide the election. We may well be facing a situation, as we did in 2000, where the popular vote and the electoral vote produce different results.”…
INVERSE INVERSION ALERT! INVERSE INVERSION ALERT! Joe Loy wins the Prediction Contest! Woo woo… :)
B., some expert Weasel on CNN said that indeed Bush is campaigning in Michigan as a Hedge against losing 2, or even conceivably all 3, of the Big 3. Trying to establish several Alternate Scenarios for Getting To 270.
“Is it too late for me to move across the border to Michgian? I’m only a few miles away… :)”
Not at all. Anybody can Move any time they like. / “Matured-rights” residence established after registration deadline; boardinghouse room-rental receipt; Provisional Ballot…whah whah whah FRAUD cried the maddened Wolverines…HI ANDREW!!! :)
October 28th, 2004 at 6:27:52 pm
You’re completely missing on this, Brendan and Joe.
First, two facts that need to be remembered:
1. The percentage of African-Americans who are registered to vote is less than the percentage of registered white voters.
2. Minorities (particularly blacks) turn out to vote in smaller percentages than do white voters (% of RV–e.g., 50% of registered blacks usually vote, vs. 60% of registered whites).
Looking at 2000, Bush was ahead by a couple points going into Election Day. The only reason so many states were so close (Wisconsin, Florida) or not close, as the case may be (Pennsylvania, Washington, Michigan), was because of record black turnout. That, combined with Bush only getting 6% of that turnout, meant a huge surge for Gore on Election Day. Nobody saw that record turnout coming (hence Bush’s lead in the pre-Election Day polls), although the polls did accurately predict Bush getting only single digits with the black vote.
This time around, the 2000 turnout numbers (which included that huge black aberration, raising the percentages of blacks who are registered as well as the percentages of blacks who vote) are now the baseline for the polling. I imagine this is reflected in the RV polls (which show Kerry neck-and-neck with Bush), and less so with the LV polls (which give Bush a more comfortable lead). This is because determining RV is easier than determining LV; polls that baseline LV on whether or not the person voted in 2000 are likely to show more Kerry support than LV polls that do not–unfortunately it’s impossible to tell which is which because the polling companies do not divulge that information. Still, two major polls (one of them looking at something like 4000 black voters–twice the number as a normal poll and thus much more accurate) show Bush at 18%. That’s a tripling of the previous black vote for Bush. Most analysts think Bush will likely get 12-15%, but that’s still double what he received in 2000.
Second, there is virtual unanimity that the black vote will not turn out as much for Kerry as they did for Gore in 2000. How much of a drop-off there will be remains to be seen, but I guarantee you the polls aren’t factoring that, because there’s simply no way to tell.
And Joe, I doubt your observations. Really, from the outside, how easy is it to discern the difference between, say, 60% turnout at 85% for Kerry versus 75% turnout at 92% for Gore? Not very, that’s for sure, because either way it looks like a landslide. Still, the numbers add up, and this time, the numbers show Kerry should be very, very worried.
The fact is, Democratic success is incredibly reliant on the black vote, and because that number was essentially “maxed out” in 2000, that dependency is a two-way vulnerability for Kerry. If Bush can make significant gains in percentage of the black vote, that’s a plus in and of itself. But when you factor in the widespread ambivalence about Kerry in the black community (in comparison to their enthusiasm for Bill Clinton and–following some decidedly low-blow tactics that painted Bush as the next coming of David Duke–Al Gore), lower black turnout also has to be considered a given, and the combination of the two is not being treated with the seriousness it deserves by Democrats–to their own disadvantage.
October 28th, 2004 at 10:08:24 pm
“polls that baseline LV on whether or not the person voted in 2000 are likely to show more Kerry support than LV polls that do not–unfortunately it’s impossible to tell which is which because the polling companies do not divulge that information.”
Not true. That information is all right here
October 28th, 2004 at 11:32:09 pm
Thanks Mike, I hadn’t seen that.
Still, asking the voters questions is not all that reliable. One of the reason I believe campaign-funded polls more is because they go off of actual lists of registered voters, lists that detail the person’s exact voting history, among many other things, so the pollster can self-select the example before you even make the phone call. Thus you can correct up-front for anomalies, or take a picture of the electorate from a certain angle, and know exactly what angle that is. The guess work thus lies in deducing how accurate a depiction your pre-selected electorate is compared to who will actually be voting. With these kinds of polls, not only do you not know if your sample accurately reflects the larger electorate, your sample is kind of haphazard and you have little control over it, save for eliminating some responses to narrow down demographics to what you want, but even then you run into the problem of discrepancies between what people say they are and what they are really.