SACRAMENTO -- "It's like déjà vu all over again" -- Yogi Berra.
In an article this summer I theorized that the race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry would come down to a few hotly contested states in the Midwest and West, plus (of course) Florida. Nearly six months later, that is still true. We are looking at a long election night with another split verdict between the popular vote and the Electoral College a distinct possibility.
Four years ago, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore essentially fought to a draw, with Bush drawing strong support from rural and small-town residents, small-business owners, white Southerners, religious voters, men, residents of the Mountain West and upper-income citizens, while Gore ran well with union members, Yankees, racial minorities, urban residents, women and voters with graduate degrees. Four years later not much has changed: Polls show that the patterns in the popular vote are almost identical to those of 2000, and the Electoral College is another toss-up.
As the race enters its final weekend, the election could yet be swayed by an unexpected gaffe, a foreign-policy event, or a surge of turnout by new voters. John Zogby, whose surveys were exactly right in 1996 and 2000, has a Bush lead of 1 percent, well within any survey's margin of error. Like a close basketball or football game, whomever scores last is going to win.
After getting a huge surge in popularity after Sept. 11, 2001, that lasted over two years, Bush's job-approval ratings have settled to the 48- to 53-percent range. And anytime an incumbent is under 50 percent in a two-way contest, he's vulnerable.
Polls taken since the last debate have shown an average Bush lead of 2 points with roughly 4 percent of those asked undecided. Historically, most of the undecided voters break for the challenger. The reason for this pattern is because if after four years some voters are still unsure whether they like the incumbent or not, they probably really don't and end up supporting the challenger. So if history repeats itself, Kerry is probably either tied or slightly ahead in the popular vote. And we should recall that Bush lost his lead in the final week of the 2000 race when his drunken-driving arrest was revealed.
Neither candidate has been able to break out to a big lead over the summer and fall. Kerry received very little "bounce" from his nominating convention, while the president's September lead evaporated after the first debate. By and large, the nation seems to be as divided as ever over the Bush presidency.
But as Election 2000 reminded us once and for all, the national popular vote doesn't really choose the president -- states, through the Electoral College, do. A national election is really 51 different local contests. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia award their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Nebraska and Maine award theirs to the winner of each congressional district with a two-vote bonus to the candidate who carries each state's popular vote. This year the Electoral College chess game will likely be as desperately tight as it was in 2000. The famous Republican Red-Democratic Blue map from 2000 will get another workout this year.
Based on either strong partisan history or current double-digit poll leads, each man has an almost equal-sized base in the Electoral College. Bush has a lock on much of the South, the Farm Belt and the Rocky Mountain states. Kerry is strong in California and most of the Northeast. Bush starts out with a base of 153 safe votes with another 69 votes leaning to him for a total of 222. Meanwhile, Kerry seems certain to win 149 votes and has another 58 votes leaning Democratic for a total of 207. The election will be decided in nine states with 109 votes, all targeted by both parties with massive advertising and heavy get-out-the-vote efforts. If Kerry has a decent shot at winning the national popular vote, Bush has a slight edge in the Electoral College because of his strength in the smaller, rural states.
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In 2000 Bush carried 30 states with 271 electoral votes. After the 2001 reapportionment, the Bush states had a net gain of seven votes. So in order to win the 270 required for victory, Kerry will have to: a) hold on to all the Gore states, and b) move either one large Bush state (like Florida or Ohio) to the Democratic column, a medium-sized Bush state (Missouri or Arizona) or some combination of smaller states. As of this writing, Kerry does not have significant polling leads (i.e., more than 5 points) in any state that Bush won in 2000. However, the president has not gained any ground either as he is not significantly ahead in any Gore state from 2000.
This year three states in the eastern time zone will tell us very quickly the shape of this election: Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, although some of Florida is in the Central time zone. Any candidate who sweeps all three will be the next president, period.
Gore carried Pennsylvania by 4 percentage points in 2000, while Bush won Ohio by 4 percentage points and Florida by 537 votes out of nearly 6,000,000 cast.
The polls in Ohio close at 7:30 p.m. EST. If Bush loses Ohio, he is in trouble as no Republican has ever been elected without winning the Buckeye State. Ohio has more rural voters than Pennsylvania, Illinois or Michigan, and northern farmers have been the backbone of the Republican Party since the Civil War. A Bush loss in Ohio would mean he'd have win Florida, plus take away a few Gore states like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.
Pennsylvania's polls close at 8 p.m. EST. If Kerry can't win in this Eastern, urban/labor state, it means he's likely also losing traditionally Republican Ohio and it will be almost mathematically impossible for him to get to 270 electoral votes.
In 2004 Florida will have exactly 10 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to win; whoever carries the Sunshine State will have taken a giant step toward victory. Most of Florida's polls close at 7 p.m.; the polls in the Panhandle region -- the section in the central time zone -- in western Florida close at 8 p.m. Since all three of these states are too close to call, hopefully the networks won't jump the gun in awarding them as they did so embarrassingly in 2000.
If the president holds on to Florida and Ohio and carries all the states he has a polling lead in now, he'll have 269 votes, needing just one additional vote to win. That vote could come from one of Maine's two congressional districts or any of the remaining "toss-up" states. Among these states, Bush carried Nevada and New Hampshire narrowly in 2000, while just barely losing Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and New Mexico. Even if Kerry loses both Florida and Ohio, he could still force a tie in the Electoral College by winning every toss-up state.
But even without a 269-each tie, Election 2004 may not be settled on Nov. 2. The new "Help America Vote Act" allows a voter whose legal eligibility is in doubt to cast "provisional ballots" that may or may not be counted. If there are enough close states, legal disputes could delay the certification of the winner for weeks.
Another potential minefield of controversy lies in Colorado with a proposed state constitutional amendment to split Colorado's nine votes proportionally. This law, if passed via referendum on Nov. 2, is set to take effect immediately. The GOP would surely sue to stop its immediate impact on the grounds that it is illegal "to change the rules in the middle of the game." The measure, however, is trailing in polling.
Regardless of the final result, several other issues will be explored in this election. Can the Republicans extend their recent dominance of the South by winning all five U.S. Senate seats vacated by popular retiring Southern Democrats? If yes, they will likely hold the Senate for the rest of this decade.
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Will Republican gerrymanders in Texas and Florida win the GOP enough House seats to make that chamber safely Republican for the next four years? What of Bush's plan to increase the Republican share of the black and Hispanic vote? The national exit polls should tell us whether the GOP was successful on this front by 9 p.m. EST.
Will minority turnout be as high or higher than the record levels of 2000? If Kerry wins, will he have any coattails for his fellow Democrats or any mandate? Which issue was more important: foreign policy or the economy? Will local issues (such as the Elian Gonzalez controversy that helped tip the Cuban-American vote and Florida to Bush) have an unforeseen impact in the Electoral College?
Referendums on social services for illegal immigrants in Arizona and same-sex marriage in Ohio and Michigan should bring out conservatives.
Will the total number of voters exceed the record of 105 million in 2000? Could bad weather depress turnout in the swing states?
If, if, if.
While the presidency may hang in the balance after Election Day, these questions should be answered on Nov. 2.
The startling events of the last decade prove the foolishness of making predictions. So I will just close by saying watch Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Whoever wins two of those three is our next president.
(Patrick Reddy serves as a consultant to California's Assembly Democrats.)
