Flyover Country

I feel like I’ve been engaging in armchair punditry for too long now. I’m going to play all my cards, and make my prediction for this election.

We’ll see how realistic my guesses are in another nine days. I’m not going to touch this entry, but I’ll post a comparison on November 3rd.

Kerry States:
Hawaii
Washington
Oregon
California
New Mexico
Illinois
Michigan
Pennsylvania
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New Jersey
Delaware
Maryland
Washington DC
Maine
Vermont

Two of the Three will go to Kerry:
Minnesota
Iowa
Wisconsin

This puts us at roughly 250 EVs out of the necessary 270 EVs.

Better than even odds that it goes to Kerry:
Florida
Ohio

If Kerry loses both Florida and Ohio, he’s done. Given where the race stands right now, I consider it fundamentally impossible for him to win without one of these two states.

If Kerry loses MN, IA, and WI, then he must win both Florida and Ohio. I don’t consider this a likely scenario.

The accepted wisdom is that anyone who is undecided at this stage in the game will break for the challenger more often than not. This is what we’re banking on right now. The President’s favorability/unfavorability polls don’t look good for him right now: 47% of people polled have a favorable opinion of Bush. It is extremely hard for an incumbent to win with numbers like this. Kerry’s down a little bit nationwide, but his numbers in battleground states have started pulling away from Bush’s.

Bottom Line:
I am going to hesitantly call this election for Kerry. There are a number of ways this could still go to Bush, but it’s getting less likely by the day.

One of the biggest potential stumbling blocks was a partisan hack ‘news program’ broadcast on Sinclair TV stations yesterday and over this weekend, but early responses suggest that the far-right feels like it was far too lenient towards Kerry. I must point out that it was originally far worse, and the changes were the result of a nationwide boycott of businesses which advertised on Sinclair TV stations.