And we are close to the Election. Very close. Three weeks-close. I can see it over the hill-close.
First, off, let me say (actually, re-say) that the election comes down to two main points.....this debate, and the in-field campaigning.
Both points favor Kerry. Though Bush is much, much better on the stump, and is better with prepared speeches, Kerry is better in the traditional debate format and with sound bites. More people are going to see Kerry at his strength than are going to see Bush at his. With the bias that is evident in the Media (remember the whole 15-point gift that Kerry was going to get from the MSM?), I don’t expect Bush to get a break in the last three weeks of the campaign. It is going to be a barrage of pro-Kerry horseshit from dawn to dusk, from the MSM on the air to Time, Newsweek, and the NYT. Commercials are getting close to being so repetitive and numerous as to turn off the voters from seeing anything that will change their mind, and the Blogsphere can only do so much.
So, it is beyond important that Bush win this debate....not tie, not lose, but win. Win bigger than a lot of people thought he did in the second debate...he has to come off presidential, collected, knowledgeable, and capable. He has to come off as his normal, hospitable, affable self, but with that keen edge we saw in the SOTU 2002, the UN speech in 2002, and his campaign speeches of last week. He needs a home run, no matter how Kerry does. Kerry won’t make a huge improvement...I don’t believe he can improve much on his very good showing in the first debate...but Bush has to fire on all cylinders.
If Bush loses the last debate, he won’t have enough time to catch up.
OK....Using RealClearPolitics as a measuring tool, we can see the numbers:
The RCP Average (3-way) between 9-10 and 9-20 was 48% to 44% in favor of Bush. Between 9-20 and 9-30, the RCP was 50%-44% Bush. Note, no debates in that time, and Bush was spreading out his lead. This is after the traditional convention bounce should have evaporated, and it supports the theory that Bush is a better campaigner..
Between 9-30 and 10-5 (the Vice-Presidential Debate), the RCP was 48%-46 Bush, This is a 4-point gain for Kerry, even though his bump was only 2%. The President was weak enough to lose 2% of his own. Hence, the 4-point swing, caused by the Debate, which occurred on 9-30. Again, this supports my statement that Kerry substantially won the first debate.
Between 10-5 and 10-8, there were four national polls taken. This is a small number of polls, so we will also factor in the Rasmussen polls (which are ‘rolling’ three-day averages) from the same dates (10-6 to 10-9). This gives us average numbers of 47.8% for Bush, 46.6% for Kerry, or 1.2% This is well within the MoE for most polls, but it shows that the Vice President stemmed the bleeding of the Bush campaign, like most of the pundits said.
From the 9th to now, here’s what we see: Bush is pulling 47.8% to Kerry’s 45.8% Bush gained a minute bounce, not necessarily real (statistically, it can be considered noise), but let’s just say he’s not dropping like a rock anymore.
What does all this mean? Well....I’ll tell you.
Right now, if you look at all the states that Bush won in 2000, they equal 274 electoral votes, more than enough to win. He won Florida by 537 votes....that won him the Presidency. And...he leads down there now (most polls have him up by 3-5%), but that means nothing this year.
According to the latest state polls (from Daly Thoughts), Bush holds 200 EV’s in his pocket, and Kerry holds 203. There are 135 EV’s that are up for grabs, as it were. Let’s look at the following scenarios, through the following assumptions:
1: Bush and Kerry will continue campaigning as they have been. Bush is more effective, and is able to make up 2 points every 10 days. That has been the trend, given no debates.
2: Kerry wins the Third Debate like he won the first, causing his poll numbers to increase by 2%, the President’s to drop by 2%, and Kerry keeps 2% of the bump until the election. He has not surrendered the 2 points that he gained in the First Debate to this point.
3: Percentage gains and losses are homogeneous throughout the battleground states, i.e. a 2% gain in the RCP polls reflects a 2% gain in the battleground states. This is logical, because these states inherently reflect the split in the country as a whole.
4: Independants get 2% of the total vote, and the total percentage cannot be more than 100%
If this occurs, then Kerry, in addition to the EV’s he has in his pocket right now (203), gains the following states: Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. That is equal to 92 EV’s, which gives Kerry 295, which wins him the election. There is one state that would be subject to a recount...Tennessee, and that is because the projected numbers are within 1% of each other. Even if Kerry lost that, he’s at 284....that’s plenty.
Let’s change Condition 1 to read: All items stay the same. There is a tie, and the MSM is able to eliminate Bush’s 2-point/10 day increase.
In that scenario, Bush has 254 EV’s, Kerry has 264, and Ohio is tied. Nightmare scenario. With all the examples of voter fraud (see Hobbs Online for details), when do you think that this scenario will end? Outer space?
Another scenario...Condition 1 reads as such: Bush ties Kerry the last debate. He gains 2 points in the popular vote over the last 2 weeks of campaigning, and does not relinquish it. Kerry loses no support.
That gives Bush Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, and Tennessee. That gives him the 200 EV’s he currently has, plus 96 EV’s. That’s 296 EV’s, and that wins, but Iowa (7 EV’s) would be a tie, Nevada (5 EV’s) would be within 1%, and at least two other states would need recounted. Again, nightmare.
Last scenario: Condition 1 says that Bush wins decisively, and gains 2 points, while Kerry loses 2 points, and the numbers stay static until the election.
That scenario allows Bush to claim, in addition to Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, and Tennessee, the states of Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. That gives Bush his 200 EV’s, plus 96 EV’s, plus 49 EV’s, for a total of 345 EV’s, which is an electoral landslide.
What these numbers mean is this: Bush can’t just work for a tie and then depend on his ability to close the gap. There are a lot of things that are working against him, including the 527’s (who are waiting for late October to spend the rest of their money), the MSM, and the Chuck Rangel’s in Congress, who are willing to expend political capital, in safe districts, to go off the deep end in an effort to hurt the POTUS.
Bush has to come out strong, and hammer home the points that people know hurt Kerry:
-He’s a tax and spend liberal, who will raise taxes on many Americans
-He’s soft on defense, and terrible on the WoT, with his “Nuisance” comment as proof
-He has no core beliefs, from abortion, to stem cells, to national defense
-his vice-presidential candidate is weak on defense and inexperienced
-Kerry’s ideas will bankrupt the country
-Kerry governs via the poll, and has no real plan to lead
-Kerry’s failure to do the job of Senator.
He also has to come out and show his strengths:
-Successes in the War on Terror
-tax Cuts
-ownership Society
-Culture of Life
-resurgance of economy
-Support of States’ rights
-rejection of the idea of the Draft/show that it was a Dem idea
He can’t get on the defensive any more than absolutely necessary, and he must be the optimist. A soild Bush win in this debate will win him the White House, barring an apocalyptic event. if he loses, it will be very, very hard for him to come back and beat Kerry.
Please, comment freely. I’ll check the comments often tomorrow.
Less...
For the past month or so I have wrestled with a decision, a decision that I finally made last weekend. As most, if not all of you, know I have a benign brain tumor (what was thought to be benign at any rate, more on that in a second) and that at the time my little passenger was discovered I had a few options, surgery, medication, or do nothing. Do nothing really wasn’t an option, since the tumor was causing me to experience some crushing headaches. Medication seemed to be the viable alternative for a time, but that alternative has all but vanished. Why, you may ask. Simple, it turns out that the tumor isn’t benign. However, it isn’t malignant either. The technical explanation is well… technical, and would take far too long to explain here, suffice it to say the tumor exists in some of kind nether region between malignancy and benginness (is that even a word?). I received this rather wonderful news (yes, that is sarcasm) last week from a neurologist I consulted for a second opinion (or, in this case, a third opinion). This neurologist is someone I have consulted before for my post-concussion syndrome, and she is a doctor I trust, implicitly, which considering how much I dislike doctors does say something. Her opinion, and that of the neurosurgeons here in Colorado, was that not only should I have the tumor removed but that to wait would be suicide.
So, tomorrow morning I am entering the hospital to have the tumor removed, I’ll also be getting something else done, but that procedure is relatively minor and not worth mentioning here. I’ll be in the hospital for about a week, so I won’t be able to post anything. After I come home from the hospital I’ll have to take another week off from pretty much everything while I recuperate at home. After that week is when I will probably post the post-mortem of my experience in the hospital.
Also, I had to take a leave of absence from teaching the brain dead (my students) for the rest of the semester, which is why I have been pretty silent for the past week, I had to make sure everything was taken care of before I left.
