Another look at the numbers

Kerry has a very slim lead in the polls at the moment. History teaches that there's usually a momentum shift after each convention, which means the polls are only going to get tighter. But the popular vote, we remember, means exactly nothing in determining who carries the presidency.

With this in mind, and sick to death of the Olympics and Swiftboat politics, I went to look for electoral projections. They're not very easy to find, probably because it's still early in the yeah. Further, nothing I found can exactly be called unbiased and I only found one page that wasn't part of a larger partisan blog or site. Still, the conclusions were pretty uniform.

Counts in red are from right-leaning site, blue skews left. Black sites seem neutral. 270 votes are needed to carry the election.

Kerry Wins 255-178 (316-202 toss-up incl.)
Kerry Leads 203-183 (152 toss-up)
Kerry Wins 327-211
Kerry Wins 286-233

It's strange those margins would be so wide. Misunderestimated, a left-leaning blog, offers an explanation:

most of the states Bush has are states that he's holding on to very strongly. He's "strong" in all of them. I think whats going on is that, by adopting such a conservative agenda, Bush is bringing out lots of new voters. Problem is: he's bringing these votes out in the conservative strongholds. He's doing nothing but strengthening and solidifying his base, which can be a good thing for fundraising and campaigning but when it comes to the vote and when it comes to the electoral college, that won't help him.

This seems like some excellent reasoning, especially after seeing a state-by-state breakdown in voting margin. It's also in keeping with my thoughts on the Republican push to polarize the discourse and the tendency of the Bush campaign to take credit for things only a complete idiot (read: a kneejerk zealot) would believe he had a hand in.

Bush has some huge leads in some really sparsely populated areas, and remember that winning a state by 80% gets you the same amount of electoral votes as if you win that state 51%-49%

The only major state Bush owns handily is Texas, which, you'll remember, we're not supposed to mess with--so that's understandable.

Rather than a frightening exclusionist mindset, the Texas DOT insists the slogan is simply part of a Waste Management effort. I guess that depends on how you categorize Mexicans, socialists and the ACLU.

That would make Manifest Destiny a community outreach program. Let's see if we can do a little image work on the trail of tears--maybe make it a low-income housing initiative. I digress.

There are still a handfull of big states up for grabs, Kerry holds California and Florida by less than 5 percentage points. Bush is ahead in Virginia and Ohio by a similarly slim margin. That's a lot of votes that can swing. I'd like to think if any shift happens, it won't be because of the issue-clouding bullshit being spewed by the 527's on both sides.

That may be naive of me.

Here's an interesting graph of the electoral breakdown since March. There is a huge swing in April that leads me to question the early numbers in that graph, but who knows. I can't think of anything that could have happened then to perpetuate that.

"The US in red and Cuba, through the net in blue, two countries separated by only ninety miles of ocean, but a world of ideologies." Shut the hell up. NBC: worst . . . commentators . . . EVER.