Kerry noses ahead in electoral vote calculation

Kerry noses ahead in electoral vote calculation

kerry things

    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.

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