JOHN ZOGBY HAS LAID IT ON THE LINE SAYING BUSH WILL LOSE tonight, and decisively. . .sort of.
Every wise sage in the media whom I have heard from tonight has said to tread carefully on this exit poll stuff. Florida is real close they say.
Let me get the politically correct stuff out of the way. Every vote counts. Vote. Vote. Vote. Every state counts. Get out the Vote.
Ok, but given that we have this electoral college system that I’d love to dismantle, the fact is that if all states tilting Kerry’s way now continue to do so, he can lose Florida and Iowa — both of which Zogby gives to Kerry. In fact, the 14 votes in the ‘tied’ column above are Nevada and Colorado, which if they go Bush’s way only give the incumbent President 261 votes.
Too few for the Bush clan to keep showing off the Lincoln bedroom.
What is surprising on Zogby’s home page is the popular vote: Bush at 49.4%, Kerry at 49.1%.
Others have Kerry winning the popular vote thus far, but it always throws me off balance to see such a close popular vote prediction next to such a disparity in electoral college vote distribution.
I think it will still be a long night.
Think of this though. Imagine the tables turned; that Kerry was down by the same margin Bush is down now. I think that the Dems would be incredibly depressed, and worrying all night that Kerry had a long, steep hill to climb.
I think an incumbent like Bush has less a steep hill to climb given the magic of incumbency, but still he has to climb that hill tonight, not the other way around.
Bush may still do it — but thus far, this election is proving to live up to the hype that preceded it.
— Steve Clemons
