We first called for John Kerry in mid-May and we stick with that. We had a little wobble in the period after the Republican Convention and before the TV debates but we now firmly believe that the Democratic ticket is good value at current prices.

The 8/5 you can now get on Kerry is out of proportion to the risk that he will lose.

With new state and national polls coming out almost by the hour it’s getting hard to keep track of who is going to win the most electoral votes a week on Tuesday. This analysis of the latest polls on Slate gives further support to those who believe that George Bush is going to following in the footsteps of his father and be a one-term President.

A huge amount of comment and information is available in the blogsphere and we like the Mystery Pollster for his expert guide to how the polls are shaping up and what is important and what you can disregard.

In the UK the bookmakers are predicting that record amounts will be wagered on the outcome of November 2nd.

William Hill reckon it will be £5m. We think that that is a gross underestimate because for the first time the betting exchanges are a major part of the market and as of time of posting nearly £2.5 million of bets had been matched on the Betfair alone and this is rising by hundreds of thousands of pounds every day.

Summing up the race in a commentary on its latest poll the New York Times had this to say:-

Two weeks before Election Day, voters hold a sharply critical view of President Bush’s record in office, but they have strong reservations about Senator John Kerry, leaving the race in a tie, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. Mr. Bush’s job approval rating is at 44 percent, a dangerously low number for an incumbent president, and one of the lowest of his tenure. A majority of voters said that they disapproved of the way Mr. Bush had managed the economy and the war in Iraq, and – echoing a refrain of Mr. Kerry’s – that his tax cuts had favored the wealthy. Voters said that Mr. Kerry would do a better job of preserving Social Security, creating jobs and ending the war in Iraq. But a majority of Americans continue to see Mr. Kerry as an untrustworthy politician who will say what he thinks people want to hear. More than half of respondents said they considered him liberal, reflecting a dominant line of attack by Mr. Bush this fall.

American punters on the Tradesports exchange have it to Bush by 59-41. The UK price has moved a notch to Bush.

At this stage four years ago the polls were more clearly for Bush than they are for the President now. Yet Al Gore went on to win it on the popular vote but Bush won on the electoral vote.