The Iowa Electronic Markets has a long track record of predicting the outcomes of elections, even beating out pollsters in terms of accuracy in some races.
The IEM is currently predicting a Bush blowout with a nearly 75% probability of a Bush win and an over 50% probability of Bush taking over 52% of the popular vote.
If that weren’t enough, the latest batch of polls contain only one light at the end of the tunnel for Kerry. The latest Pew poll finds that Bush leads by eight points over Kerry, the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll has Bush up by 6, and Gallup shows a Bush lead of 8 points as well.
The Kerry campaign can take some solace in the fact that latest IBD/Christian Science Monitor poll shows the race tied, however, considering that it is the only poll saying such a thing it wouldn’t be cause for celebration.
The Democrats are also trying argue that some hidden mass of voters are going to crawl out of the woodwork and vote for Kerry. Ironically enough, that’s the same thing the GOP tried to convince themselves of in 1996. The New York Times even had a an article trumpeting the Democrat’s voter registration drive.
The problem being that the group responsible for this voter registration drive, the 527 Americans Coming Together is the same organization that has been using felons to get absentee ballots and is already being investigated on charges of voter fraud in Ohio. Once the number of people registered multiple times, dead people trying to vote (the dead being one of the Democrats’ core constituencies), and other acts of fraud, I suspect this “wave” of Democratic voter registration will be a ripple.
Of course, the wise political junkie will always run like IBD’s laughable poll is true and run as though they were behind in the polls – and that’s what the GOP will do right into Election Day. The RNC’s 72-hour GOTV drive before 2002’s election made a huge difference in the nearly unprecedent win for the GOP in Congress – and this year that effort will be even bigger. Already the GOP has registered over 3 million new GOP voters, and that effort isn’t going to stop until the polls are closed.
The Democrats will lie, cheat, and sue to win this election – but to borrow a quotation from the incomparable Hugh Hewitt – if it’s not close, they can’t cheat.
Really bad example! Bob Dole DID see a surge of support at the end of the 1996 Presidential campaign. Virtually every poll showed Clinton with a 20-point lead. Clinton ended up winning with by a mere eight points. That should serve as a strong testimonial about undecideds breaking for the challenger…and Kerry needn’t a last-minute bounce anywhere near the size Dole got to defeat Dubya.
As for the Iowa Electronic Markets, expect to see it change in the weeks to come barring a disastrous debate performance for Kerry. I just watched a segment about the IEM’s last week….they’ve been known to, I can’t believe I’m saying this, twist in the wind depending on the mood of the hour.
The bottom line is that Bush has only two chances of winning. If Kerry does poorly in the debates, Bush will most likely have the momentum he needs to wrap things up. Beyond that, the Bush Team will have to hope the erroneous polls stacked with disproportionately high numbers of registered Republicans become self-fulfilling prophecies, depressing Dem turnout for Kerry under the false assumption that it’s “hopeless”.
Kerry simply needs a couple strong showings late in the game to crush Bush like the cockroach that he is. Americans still disapprove of Bush’s job performance, but a number of undecideds who don’t necessarily like or trust Bush haven’t been impressed with Kerry thus far. If Kerry is able to do as well in the debates as he did last week at NYU, that’ll bring the chicks back to the Kerry camp by the minivan-load, particularly with soaring gas prices, an economy in the toilet and increasing bloodshed in Iraq.
You just convince yourself of that. Meanwhile, those of us who live on Planet Earth can see Bush’s 50%+ approval rating and the smell of death on the Kerry campaign.
Most polls I’ve seen show Bush’s approval rating at less than 50%. Keep in mind, you’re getting your approval rating information from the same poll sources showing the GOP with a 7-point voter registration advantage. It’ll be very interesting how that plays out in the real world where the GOP is at a slight disadvantage in party affiliation.
More bad news for Bush…..
Official new voter registration numbers are in for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh and its core suburbs). Among the approximately 40,000 new registered voters, 21,859 registered as Democrats, 9,369 registered as Republicans, and 9,265 registered as independents. Now, Allegheny County is a Democratic-leaning county, but the Dems do not have anything close to a more than 2-1 registration advantage among overall voters as they do with new voters. In a Democratic year, Al Gore won Allegheny County with only 56%. Couple that with the fact that Teresa Heinz Kerry is from western PA, and the tendency of “independent” swing voters to decide in favor of the challenger in large numbers and it begins to paint a very blue picture for Pennsylvania…not to mention a different sort of blue picture for the Bush campaign.