Ferrablog

Despite some ups and downs over the past 12 days, I'm sticking with the election prediction I made back on the 20th: Kerry by 2 points in the national vote, and 311-227 in the EC, defending all the Gore states and adding New Hampshire, Florida and Ohio. I've had some concerns about Kerry losing New Mexico and/or Iowa, but I think he'll hold on. In fact, I think it might be more likely that he instead pries a state like Nevada or Colorado loose from Bush.

I did have some doubts about Florida as well, but things look much better for Kerry in my state than they did 12 days ago. He's moved ahead here in several polls, including Gallup, Zogby and the NY Times Group "Florida poll" in the last few days. And according to these polls, he's up by 8-10 among those who have voted early. And if you ever wanted to gauge the motivation of one side versus the other, most of these folks voting early have had to endure lines of 2-5 hours to vote. My wife spent 2.5 hours on Saturday waiting. So the Kerry voters are more motivated it appears, and I see that spilling over to Tuesday.