A little bit of Schadenfreude

Polls show Kerry gaining in crucial states
By Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 25/10/2004)
Just over a week before the United States
presidential election, opinion polls have revealed a
desperately tight race between George W Bush
and John Kerry, with the Democrat senator making
important gains in key battleground states...

A senior Republican official admitted to the
Washington Post that Mr Bush's leading aides
were worried about his lack of a lead in key states.
He described the mood in the campaign as
apprehensive.
" 'Grim' is too strong a word," he said. "But if we feel
this way a week from now, that will be grim."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/25/wus25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/10/25/ixnewstop.html

If/when/whatever, I'll be singing "move on get over it," I
know that.

The grudging concession to reality, the lag is almost measurable. yeah, they've lost so far, but on paper it's still doable. Sounds worse than the Dems felt before 2002.

A local pundit and his pollster had moved from how Bush can win to how Bush can get to WHERE he might win. The usual slant and wishful thinking, just a shade above clueless or fatalistic loyalty.

Fingers grasping the edge of the cliff but the arms aren't tired yet, too arrogant to panic.

REpublicans

In FLorida, Dade Dems registered more than twice the voters than Reps.
In Broward County, almost five times as many.
In Palm Beach 15 times as many

While the average increase in registration over the state was 18 percent, Black voter registration increased 36 percent, while the black population only increased by 16 percent.

In Oregon, by August 1, Dems had increased their lead over Reps by over 65,000.
It is beleived that this increase was much widened in between Aug 1 and the closing of registration.

In Ohio, Republicans are very concerned as Democrats registered over 600,000 new voters
while Republicans may have only increased by one fifth that amount. Other articles indicate that the increase in Ohio was only about 260,000 but these articles were referring to older data and did not include voters registered in the last two months in that state.

No matter what, the behavior of Republicans in Ohio seem to indicate that there is some discrepancy between new dems and reps because they are trying very hard to get voters disenfranchised, and are stating that they are going to challenge every democratic voter entering a polling place in order to get people to walk away from voting due to long lines. I certainly hope dems are constesting this as voter intimidation and even as racial discrimination, as many of the new voters are black.