Election Prediction

OK, it's time for a prediction.

1. I think John Kerry is going to win the popular vote by a narrow margin: 49.15% to 48.75% for George W. Bush. That leaves 2.1% for Ralph Nader and the rest.

Kerry 57.0 million votes
Bush 56.55 million votes
Other 2.44 million votes

2. The Electoral College vote is probably going to be fairly close, and I think this is even harder to predict than the popular vote. Essentially, the thin national vote margin might be repeated in various states, which makes it very difficult to predict the outcome in a number of key places.

I'll go with Kerry 279 EVs; Bush 259.

I've given Kerry all the Gore states, save for New Mexico, plus taken 2000 Bush states New Hampshire and Ohio. There are numerous possible alternatives, and I genuinely think most of them end in a Kerry win given the current polling data at the state level.

Bush is apparently doing really well in his most solid 2000 red states, and Bloomberg recently reported that Bush may win as many as 2 million new votes in Texas, California and New York. However, none of those new Bush voters are going to shift even 1 electoral vote (EV) in 2004.

I think there's a greater than 50% chance that Kerry will receive more than 300 EVs, which would be great.

Get out the vote (GOTV)!