MysteryPollster looks at the Columbus Dispatch’s old-fashioned mail-in poll. It’s a very big sample – close to 3,000 – and has a good track record. It shows the race an absolute dead-heat. But there’s a wrinkle:
One difference between the latest poll and the one published four weeks ago is the inclusion of more newly registered voters in the sample, whose names were in the latest available data from the secretary of state’s office. About 88 percent of the new voters – including those from Ohio’s largest counties – were among the potential poll participants. And which candidate did those new voters prefer? “These newbies now represent one in eight Ohio voters, and they support Kerry by nearly a 2-1 margin [65% to 34%].”
Uh-oh. There’s more:
Meanwhile, the poll contains troubling signs for Bush. Only 44 percent say things in the nation are headed in the right direction. Fewer than half approve of his handling of Iraq and the economy. And his overall approval rating is 49 percent, a measure that many political experts say represents a ceiling on his support Tuesday.
I’ve been asked to make a prediction. It’s so close you’d be a fool to do so now. So I’ll stick with my hunch back last March and say Kerry is going to win. I say that simply because Bush’s record is too poor to merit re-election. And I trust the American people to realize that. As soon as Kerry proved he was a viable alternative in the debates, he won.
STEYN THREATENS TO QUIT: If Kerry wins today, Mark Steyn has said he won’t wrote again for a while. Money quote:
Usually after making wild predictions I confidently toss my job on the line and say, if they don’t pan out, I’m outta here. I’ve done that a couple of times this campaign season – over Wes Clark (remember him?) – but it almost goes without saying in these circumstances. Were America to elect John Kerry president, it would be seen around the world as a repudiation not just of Bush and of Iraq but of the broader war. It would be a declaration by the people of American unexceptionalism – that they are a slightly butcher Belgium; they would be signing on to the wisdom of conventional transnationalism. Having failed to read correctly the mood of my own backyard, I could hardly continue to pass myself off as a plausible interpreter of the great geopolitical forces at play. Obviously that doesn’t bother a lot of chaps in this line of work – Sir Simon Jenkins, Robert ‘Mister Robert’ Fisk, etc., – and no doubt I could breeze through the next four years doing ketchup riffs on Teresa Heinz Kerry, but I feel a period of sober reflection far from the scene would be appropriate.
This, of course, is silly. If Kerry is elected, it will merely mean that Americans have chosen a different commander-in-chief to pursue an enemy that we all recognize still exists. And may I offer the sincere hope that anyone who can pen prose as elegant and as consistently hilarious as Mark Steyn should never quit journalism? He should continue to do so – but from a distance that allows him greater insight into the American psyche. Canada, perhaps? Or France?
The Dish 