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October 24, 2004
The State of the Race With 9 Days to Go
By Alan Abramowitz
There have been 35 national polls released since the first presidential debate, not counting tracking polls. Bush holds an average lead of 1.5 percent in these 35 polls. There is no trend evident. In 19 polls released between October 1 and 15, Bush led by an average of 1.6 points. In 16 polls released since October 15, Bush led by an average of 1.4 points.
Here are the results in the 11 most important battleground states. These are the 11 states identified as the key battlegrounds by the N.Y. Times today.
| State (EVs) | October polls | Mean Bush lead/deficit | | FL | (27) | 14 | +0.6 | | OH | (20) | 12 | -1.7 | | PA | (21) | 10 | -3.7 | | MI | (17) | 7 | -4.0 | | WI | (10) | 9 | -0.2 | | IA | (7) | 9 | +0.7 | | NV | (5) | 5 | +5.4 | | NM | (5) | 5 | -0.6 | | MN | (10) | 5 | -2.4 | | CO | (9) | 9 | +5.3 | | NH | (4) | 9 | -1.7 |
Based on the average of all October polls, Kerry is currently leading in 7 states with 87 electoral votes. Bush is currently leading in 4 states with 48 electoral votes. In addition to these battleground states, The Times has Kerry favored in states with 190 electoral votes with Bush favored in states with 213 electoral votes. Adding these to the electoral votes of the battleground states in which Kerry and Bush now have the edge and you get the following: Kerry 277, Bush 261.
Obviously, neither candidate has a secure lead in the Electoral College right now--a switch of one or two states such as Ohio, Wisconsin, or Florida could change the picture considerably. But based on this analysis of recent polls in the battleground states, if either candidate has a slight edge, it's John Kerry. And that's without even factoring in the expected late movement of undecided voters to Kerry.
(Note: source for national and state poll results is website 2.004k.com.)
Posted by EDM Staff at 05:11 PM | link
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