BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Tuesday, November 02, 2004
FINAL TALLY. Well, you know,
the final before-the-votes-come-in tally. Electoral-Vote.com:
Kerry, 298; Bush, 231; Slate:
Bush, 269; Kerry, 269, with Bush more likely to win because his
support is a bit firmer. Both award Florida to Kerry, which worries
me. I mean, Kerry may win Florida, but will he get Florida?
Just ask Al Gore.
Slate gives Ohio to Bush;
Electoral-Vote.com gives it to Kerry. That's the main
difference.
GUARANTEED TO INDUCE NAUSEA.
Greg
Palast writes:
John Kerry is down by
several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has
yet been counted. He's also losing big time in Colorado and Ohio;
and he's way down in Florida, though the votes won't be totaled
until Tuesday night.
Through a combination of
sophisticated vote rustling - ethnic cleansing of voter rolls,
absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that "spoil" votes - John
Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could easily exceed
one million votes.
This morning, Supreme Court justice
John Paul Stevens - generally thought of as one of the good guys -
allowed the Republicans to station
party goons inside polling
places across Ohio to challenge the credentials of voters who look
like Democrats. (I'm pretty sure that means voters with black or
brown skin.)
Unless turnout is so high that the
Kerry forces are able to swamp the Bushies, this could be a long,
ugly day (week, month, take your pick).
KERRY: BETTER ON TERRORISM.
A Media Log reader passes along this, from Gallup Poll
editor-in-chief Frank Newport. According to Newport, Kerry
significantly closed the terrorism gap with Bush during the last week
of the campaign.
Is there any indication
that the missing weapons in Iraq and/or the Osama bin Laden tape
will affect the outcome?
Bush's positioning
vis-à-vis Kerry on both Iraq and terrorism has slipped in the
most recent poll, and it is reasonable to assume that this
slippage is, at least in part, related to the weapons and bin
Laden tape. Among all national adults, 49% now choose Kerry as the
candidate best able to handle Iraq, while 47% choose Bush. This
marks a significant pickup on this measure for Kerry, who was down
nine points to Bush last week. In fact, Kerry has lost out to Bush
on this measure in every poll conducted since the Democratic
convention.
Bush's margin over Kerry as the
candidate best able to handle terrorism is now seven points 51% of
Americans choose Bush and 44% choose Kerry. This again marks a
significant change. Last week, Bush had an 18-point margin over
Kerry, and the 7-point advantage is the lowest yet for
Bush.
I don't buy the idea that the
bin Laden tape had much to do with it, but it would seem that the
steady drumbeat of bad news from Iraq (culminating, in my mind, in
two reports: the disappeared explosives and the assassination of
Iraqi security-force recruits) may have finally caught up with
Bush.
The final
Gallup poll: 49 percent to
49 percent.
posted at 11:06 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
