Tuesday, November 02, 2004
My election prediction
THROWING DARTS
Bush wins by 5% in the popular vote - maybe more - and wins 300 electoral votes.
I follow the polls. I also don't fully understand the polls.
Most of the pollsters seem to have hedged their bets on voter turnout. They think it will be higher than usual. They also think the makeup of this group is predominantly pro-Kerry: young with cell phones.
With some joy at the thought of throwing the numbers out the window, I'm going to try to interject some common sense into my analysis of this race. If John Kerry thinks he's going to become President of the United States on the backs of university brats who call for job interviews on phones that produce static when passing stereo speakers, then I think he's got another thing coming to him.
Blacks will not come out in waves for Kerry. Neither will undecideds, who will take the safe and known quantity in Bush. People still perceiving terrorism as a threat will go Bush. So will evangelicals.
Most of the pollsters have Bush with a slight lead, and they've done so by employing different likely voter models than they have in the past. My guess is that these models are wrong, and that Americans are far more poised to vote yes on a referendum on Bush than they are to change course with a weak candidate like Kerry. It's surprising that the race is as apparently close as most of the polls indicate.
I know Bush critics will view it differently. They'll say that they're surprised Bush's 'disastrous' presidency still has him in the race. But it will all depend on independent voters and not the people already knee deep in ideological bias. And my reading of the non-partisan voter is that they will stay the course with a president they trust in the war on terror than substitute him with a man they still know very little about.
The devil you know. Wins out most of the time. That's the way I see it unfolding on Tuesday. And, if I'm right, it will be decisive. No law suits. No recounts. No hanging chads. Just four more years.
