For me, this election is the mother of all SuperBowls…
Posted : August 26, 2004 at 12:23 am [America/Los_Angeles]
[via By the numbers… (David Shuster)]
…and yeah, I know I need to get a life 
.
In the meantime, enjoy this:
…
Neither of us, in all of our travels in recent weeks,
have found any Al Gore voters from 2000 who say they are planning to
vote for George W. Bush this time around. On the other hand, it
has not been that difficult to find Bush voters from 2000 who will be
voting this time for John Kerry.I’ve
checked with several respected Republican pollsters… and they tell
me, privately, they are finding the same thing. It’s one of the
reasons that in the battleground states in particular, there is an
incredibly intense focus on the GOP side at registering new voters or
getting Republicans and evangelicals who stayed home 4 years ago to
promise they won’t stay home this time.Bush
political advisor Karl Rove thinks a few million Evangelicals stayed
home in 2000 because of the old Bush drunk driving arrest that came out
the weekend before the election. If Rove is wrong, and a large
number of Evangelicals did not stay home… the Bush campaign this fall
is facing some serious trouble.The math on
this is pretty simple: Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 by 500,000
votes. And he did this despite Ralph Nader receiving 2.8 million
votes. (Pat Buchanan, who took votes from the GOP side…
received 448,000 votes.)If, as the
pollsters indicate, there are few Gore voters who are switching to the
Republicans this time, and if there are a larger number of Bush voters
who are switching over to support Kerry, the math doesn’t work for the
Bush-Cheney campaign. Add in a portion of the Nader 2000 voters
who, seeing how close things were 4 years ago, will support Kerry, and
the numbers for Bush-Cheney get even more challenging.
Not all of the content referenced here, nearly two decades ago, survived the years.
I do realize that the airwaves will be inundated with polls in the next 70-odd days. And yes, there will be days when Senator Kerry’s camp will be smiling and then there will be days when the President’s camp will be cheering. That aside, I think David might be on to something here.
So, allow me to go out on a limb and predict the following for the upcoming 2004 US Presidential Election:
In order for President Bush to win, he must get brand new Republican voters, especially in key battleground states to even make this an interesting fight. Either way, I DO NOT think this election will be as close as the one in 2000. Infact, it’s going to be a fairly convincing win. The big question is - Who will that be?
- Anand
Category: United (or not) State of American Politics 2004