Hunting The Muse

10/29 EV Status

How's it looking so far? It's really hard to say. If you go by today's polls, then it looks like Bush is winning. There are two states that I strongly disagree with in this scenario, though. First Hawaii is going to Kerry. Everyone's reacting to these two polls that show Bush threatening, but they're completely misleading. Kerry's got Hawaii in the bag. The other state is MN. That state has same-day voter registration. There's no question that that benefits Democrats, who always want more turnout. So what does that mean?

It means that not counting Michigan, you have each candidate at 250 EVs. Michigan is 17 EVs, which means it would only take each candidate to 267 EVs, which isn't enough. It means Michigan doesn't matter. So in this scenario, it means that whoever wins PA wins the election.

Now, that's assuming polls are accurate (aside from a couple of obvious adjustments).

But there are plenty of other pro-Democratic arguments to make. And here's where I am unsure. I'm in a bubble, I admit it. So I don't know if this is just whistling past a graveyard. We Democrats were stunned about the 2002 midterm elections. We thought we would be making gains in Congress, and instead we lost ground. I'm not sure we learned our lesson from that. But, here are the bubble reasons.

• Undecideds: There are still a few undecideds - around three or four percent. It's less than in 2000, when we had 7% undecided at this point. Undecideds right now believe 2:1 that it's time for a new direction. Most people believe undecideds will break against the incumbent by a wide margin.
• Registrations: Democrats have evidently won the registration wars, and recent registrations aren't usually included in polling.
• Turnout: The argument is that Democrats will win turnout.
• Otherwise inaccurate polls: Even aside from registration and turnout, the argument is that the polls themselves are inaccurate by counting too many Republicans in their samples.

So, you see how it goes. If it turns out that Democrats have grown faster than Republicans, and we have more motivated turnout, and we have all these young people and cell phone owners show up to the ballot lines that have never been polled, and, and, and (just clap your hands and believe!), then we could have a Kerry blowout.

But it's hard. That's an awful lot of faith to have. The GOP surprised us in 2002 using their 72-hour strategy for the first time, and they'll be using it again.

On the other hand, I don't think anyone is anymore making a serious argument for a Bush blowout.

Posted by Curt at October 29, 2004 06:29 PM