The Horse Race

DATA: The horse race numbers in Electoral Votes as reported by Zogby (reported in BOLD ITALICS, I might add.)

	Sep 21	Sep 07	Aug 23	Aug 03	Jul 26	Jul 10	Jun 20	Jun 06	May 23
Bush	241	222	214	215	220	205	285	242	218
Kerry	264	273	286	291	275	322	253	296	320

That's funny, it seems I recently read, "Bush clear leader in poll" on the cover of USA Today. (I don't actually buy the USA Today, but do catch the headlines in their newspaper boxes occasionally.) Of course, you and I and USA Today all realize that national polls mean squat in American politics. It's all about the states, not the nation. Texas and Alabama could go 100% red tomorrow and shift the shit out of national polls, but it wouldn't change the election one bit. Meanwhile, ElectoralVote.com notes that

The big news today is that Kerry is once again ahead in the electoral college by dint of his edging ahead in Florida (49% to 48%) and New Jersey (47% to 43% among RVs).

Hrmn, maybe USA Today was just getting its news straight from the DrudgeReport again.



One should note that according to the Zogby table above, neither president is a winner. This is because a candidate needs 270 votes to win. And, yes, it is possible for both candidates to get 269 votes and tie. If that happens, Joe Grossberg's blog lets us know what would happen:

Short answer: the Representatives from each state vote, and whoever gets a majority wins.



What happens if the states are a 50-50 tie? No fucking clue.



The scary part is that, with the exception of Kerry's small lead in Florida, this is exactly what current projections show.

I have a feeling I know what would happen... The courts would decide (again). Wouldn't that be funny if the courts picked a president twice in a row? Well, not "ha ha" funny. Well, not funny at all.

Comments

[Jordan]

As you may already be aware, http://www.blogger.com/r?http%3A%2F%2Fwww.electoral-vote.com%2F">electoral-vote.com tallies all of the new state polls every day and calculates an "if-the-election-were-held-tomorrow" winner. Today there's a good post about some possible end-game scenarios, and in the http://www.blogger.com/r?http%3A%2F%2Fwww.electoral-vote.com%2Finfo%2Ffaq.html">FAQ it describes what happens if there's a tie. It's the House of Representatives which chooses the new President in case of a tie, and unless the Dems can get a majority in the House on November 2 (which is very, very unlikely), that means Bush is the new President. And if the vote in the House is tied, who gets to pick? That's right, everybody's favorite Dick -- Cheney.

The site has a ton of great resources and some pretty graphs to look at. Definitely worth checking out.