Undecided voters are paying very close attention to the national polls and will swing to the candidate who appears to be the choice of other Americans in other states.
The electoral college, one week before the presidential election, appears to give John Kerry a reasonable shot at winning the election. Florida and Ohio, both of which President Bush carried in 2000 and which are in combination probably essential for the reelection of the President, also both seem very close now.
The national polls, pundits of every ideological stripe remind us, mean nothing in determining who will elect the President. These pundits assume that undecided voters who enter the polling booths in states too close to call now will remain undecided. Almost certainly, these voters will be paying very close attention to the national polls and will swing to the candidate who appears to be the choice of other Americans in other states.
These polls are not hard for the ordinary voter to decipher. President Bush is comfortably the favorite between the two major party candidates. In most polls, President Bush draws more votes than both Kerry and Nader combined. In some polls, President Bush receives an absolute majority of all American voters — more than the Democrat, Green, Reform, Libertarian and undecided voters combined.
Assume that an undecided voter enters the polling booth on November 2nd in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire or New Mexico with the President holding a three or four point advantage over Senator Kerry. If these voters choose Kerry and if Kerry ekes out a tiny margin in the Electoral College, he will almost without question not only be a minority president, but the victor against an incumbent president who was the clear favorite among the American people.
His party would not control the House of Representatives — the Supreme Court decision to allow review of the Texas redistricting case will not affect the current elections and so Republicans will gain a few seats, even with the most optimistic forecasts of Democrat fortunes. It is difficult to conceive of how Democrats could gain control in the 2008 midterm elections, but easy to see how they could lose another half dozen seats.
Democrats also are a very long shot to capture the Senate — almost everything would have to go perfectly for Democrats to actually gain one seat on election day. Although that nominally would give Democrats a Vice President Edwards tie-breaking vote, there are two additional wildcards.
First, the Louisiana Senate seat will not be lost by Republicans on election day — Vitter will make the runoff — even if it is not won outright by Republicans on election day. Second, John Kerry will have to leave the Senate when he becomes President. Democrats have a remarkably weak field of candidates to replace him and Republicans have a remarkably strong field of candidates — two popular former governors and one sitting governor. Republicans will probably win one of those two post-election elections and could easily win both.
This means that voters will have to choose between a candidate who, if he wins, will have very little ability to do much at all because he is a minority president with minorities in both Houses of Congress, or a candidate who, if he wins, will probably be the first president in sixteen years to actually win a majority of the popular vote and whose party will control Congress.
The closer we come to November 2nd, the clearer the trend toward Bush will be. Polls that show him actually leading in states like Hawaii show just how willing Americans are to rally behind the man who appears to be the man other Americans in other states want to be president. "Don’t change horses in midstream" may be a cliche, but it is a cliche with teeth.
Undecided voters are watching other undecided voters, and the more the weight of opinion seems to be in favor of the President, the more the undecided voters will decide, in the end, for the man who will come out of the election with a mandate from the people. Everything points to that man being President Bush.
bwalker2004@cox.net
http://www.amazon.com/Sinisterism-Secular-Religion-Revised-Updated/dp/1432705466
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