Kerry moves up in state polls but down in the national ones

In spite of a run of poor national polls the Kerry-Edwards campaign has today edged ahead of Bush in the latest estimate of electoral votes based on the most recent state polls.

A new poll in the key swing state of Wisconsin shows that Kerry has overturned a 5% Bush lead and is now 1% ahead. The excellent electoral-vote.com puts the challenger ahead by the narrowest of margins – 253 to 247. This contrasts sharply with the round-up of national polls, one of which is giving it to Bush by 6%.

The three main betting markets are now all looking at this differently:-

The UK price has been moving just a little to Bush.

Tradesports, the US focused betting exchange, gives it to Bush by 54-46.

The Iowa Electronic Market now has it at Bush 59 Kerry 41.

The Sunday Times columnist and blogger, Andrew Sullivan, is predicting a very high turn-out and notes:-

First off, John Kerry is not such a dreadful candidate. For an awfully long time he appeared to be running an execrable campaign, throwing staffers out on a regular basis, struggling to find a message, appearing utterly aloof and unlikeable, easily tagged, in the words of one right-wing blogger, as “a haughty French-looking senator who, by the way, served in Vietnam”. But this surface haplessness belied an extremely successful money operation and a secret weapon: his debating skill. Unlike George W Bush, Kerry spent the year campaigning. He had honed his message, relearnt how to explain his policies and was poised to kill in the first debate. I had assumed ahead of time that Bush would do to Kerry what he had done to Al Gore: out-charm and out-humanise him. But this time Kerry’s deep voice, calm delivery and relentless marshalling of facts simply bulldozed Bush

We can expect a tense and exciting final two weeks.