Terminal illness
Has John Kerry's popularity flatlined?
UPDATE: Sometimes my sense of humor is a bit too subtle. For those who've spent any time watching the Tradesports site, the above graph is part joke, part wishful thinking. (Notice, I phrased it as a question and not a statement.)
I'd checked the site at just the right moment, saw an image that looked a little like a heart monitor going "flatline", and the phrase came to mind. In point of fact, that shows a span of just three hours in the middle of the night (U.S. time) after the last debate. I knew change was inevitable, but was hoping against hope it wouldn't happen. If you check the site at the moment I post this, and check the weekly view, you actually see something dramatically different.
Sorry if anyone read my post and didn't get the very wry humor. (I tend to have a real problem with this, and really should run some things past Steve and Rick more often.)
ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, now I feel guilty of sounding negative. Please understand the update above is meant to show that the Tradesports site should be taken with a grain of salt. If you want a decent analysis of real poll numbers, check out RealClearPolitics.com. But be warned: as I've said many times in many places, it is my firm belief that the polling science is broken this year, because polls generally work on methodology built since WWII, in the shadow of a dominant Democratic Congress, a liberal media, and Cold War uncertainty.
We don't know how many new Republicans have been registered this year or what kind of turnout we'll get. If Strauss & Howe theory is correct that we're headed for a political realignment, and if Fred Barnes is right that realignment will solidify the conservative Republican preference we've seen in Congress for the last 10 years with a new preference for Republican voter registration, and if the Republicans' new 72-hour GOTV efforts do in 2004 what they did in 2002, the polls will not show what the final vote will be. And if that is all true, the vote will be HUGE for Republicans.
Here's an ironclad prediction: Bush 52 - Kerry 44 - Nader 4. And I think I may be underestimating.
UPDATE: Some interesting information on topic. Is George Soros manipulating the Tradesports market?
Comments
I hope we follow the Aussies in astonishing ourselves with a pretty clear statement that offering to raise the dead is not the same as actually doing it, and we don't want our president to only be able to say "I'd do whatever it is better, but I don't have a clue how I would."
Posted by: John Anderson | October 16, 2004 03:05 AM