ACCORDING TO ELECTORAL-VOTE.COM, IF THE ELECTION WERE TODAY, John Kerry would win by a single electoral vote, even if Minnesota’s ten electoral votes, now dead even, swing toward Bush.
Fragile, very fragile.
However, TradeSports.com is bouncing all over the place. Before the first debate, those putting money on the line in this presidential race gave Bush an approximate 68% chance of winning vs. Kerry at 32%. After the first debate, the ratio evened just a bit to 62% for Bush and 38% for Kerry.
On October 15th, Matthew Yglesias recorded that Tradesports had the betting averages on Bush vs. Kerry at 54% Bush; 46% Kerry.
Today, however, Bush is up again — 61% Bush and 39% Kerry.
Maybe this is a good moment for those who are betting types to profit on some arbitrage. I don’t gamble, but what is clear is that all of those people who seem to KNOW who will win this race don’t have a clue. The compass is pointing in different directions.
Courtesy of Gloria Dittus, I had the opportunity to enjoy dinner the other evening with Andrew Kohut and Diane Colasanto, who are the power-couple of public opinion research. Kohut now heads the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and was president of the Gallup Organization for ten years. Colasanto was president of Princeton Survey Research Associates and is one of America’s very top survey methodologists.
Kohut, who has a piece on polls and voter attitudes in the New York Times today told me that he thinks that the vote, on election day, will decisively favor one candidate or the other — and that it’s unlikely we’ll have a replay of the many weeks long process that we had in the Gore-Bush 2000 race. That said, he told me that he and his wife have never called a presidential election wrong.
I asked what he predicted four years ago, and the prognostication then had been that public opinion was too close too call. Kohut told me that Pew will have its data and predictions on the election out on election day.
— Steve Clemons
