Why is everyone (except for Fox News) claiming Ohio is too close to call?
51% to 49% looks pretty definitive to me. Bush's margin over Kerry there is about 136,000 votes. It is utterly improbable to think that the provisional ballots are going to magically hand the state's 20 electoral college votes to Kerry. As far as I can see, nobody is claiming that there is any more than 250,000 provisional ballots and there might even be fewer than 100,000. These ballots by their very nature are, well, provisional: many will surely prove to be invalid votes. It may well be the case that they trend towards Kerry, but it is preposterous to imagine that these provisional ballots, by some miracle, contain only Kerry votes which is the only way he could make any dent on that 136,000 margin. Anyone who thinks Ohio is still up for grabs is guilty of wishful thinking.
I was reading the new Huntington book in Starbucks this morning when some ould one started complaining to me unprompted to me about Bush. I was tempted to just give her the finger, but instead I told her I'd voted for him.
I'm set to have a LOT of fun over the next few weeks.
Posted by: Peter Nolan | November 03, 2004 at 03:07 PM