Tuesday, January 13, 2004

Landslide? I know that it's too early to use that word, but Dan Drezner links to an interesting statistic from AP:
[T]he new poll also found that Republican Bush appears to be a viable option for New York voters in a state where Democrats have a 5-3 enrollment advantage over Republicans. Among all registered New York voters sampled, 34 percent said they would definitely vote for the incumbent president in this year's election while 36 percent said they would definitely vote against him. Thirty percent were undecided.
It's a tough game figuring out how undecideds will go. As a rule of thumb, I assume (perhaps foolishly, perhaps not) that the "decided" indicate something of a paradigm, and that, all things equal, the undecided voters will fall generally into that pattern. If that holds, suddenly New York is competitive in 2004. In such a scenario, one could safely write off the Democrats, turn off the TV, and sleep till inauguration day. If the Democrat has to spend money to wrest New York from the "R" column, what the hell are they going to do in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida?

More: John Ellis writes:

The political situation reminds me of Reagan-Carter 1980. The national polls said it would be close. The state-by-state polling pointed toward a 10 percentage point win and an electoral college landslide.
Of course, the race will tighten up, at least on paper, as the nominee becomes known. You can't say this enough, though: Turnout will be key.

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