Yesterday, I mentioned the Gallup finding that Kerry is doing even better in "purple", swing states (the margin of victory for Gore or Bush was less than 5 points) than in "blue" states (Gore's margin of victory was more than 5 points). I got curious about how Kerry's current performance compared to the actual vote in 2000, using the red, blue and purple categories defined by Gallup. Here's what I found.

In 2000, Gore lost the Gallup red states by 57-41, carried the Gallup blue states by 55-40 and the purple states (Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin) were a dead heat, at 48-48. Today, the Gallup data (using likely voters and throwing in Nader to make the comparison more exact) show Kerry also losing in the red states, though by less (51-45), running about the same as Gore in the blue states (55-42) and running way ahead of Gore in the purple states (52-39).

What this means is that Kerry's overall lead in the Gallup poll is in no way traceable to running up the vote in the blue states; he's simply holding the Gore lead in those states. Instead, Kerry's lead over Bush is driven by exactly what you'd want it driven by: strongly improved performance, relative to Gore, in swing states and whittling down Bush's lead in the red states.

In light of this analysis, it's interesting to look at a Barron's analysis by John Zogby of state-by-state polling (both his own and others) that shows Kerry holding 85 percent of the blue state (defined here in the traditional way as states Gore carried, no matter how small the margin) electoral votes plus New Hampshire, Bush holding only 63 percent of the red state electoral votes and 136 electoral votes "in play". The in play electoral votes, in Zogby's analysis, are distributed over 12 states (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin), 8 of which were carried by Bush in 2000 and only 4 by Gore, meaning the Republicans have much more turf to defend than the Democrats.

The beauty part, of course, is that turf may be very difficult to defend if the Gallup purple state calculations are any indication of how voters in this very similar group of "in play" swing states are leaning. It's a long way to November, I'll grant you, but you've got to be happy with how this election campaign is starting out.