Friday Horse Race

The Final Edition

On the Tradesports Exchange, Bush continues to lead, albeit narrowly. The Bush Industrial Index stands at 3017.3 which is a pretty healthy figure. My absurdist Tradesports Popular Projection would give Kerry a win in the popular vote by a margin of 2.6 million votes, but Bush would win the electoral college with 276 votes. In order to win, Kerry would need to win in all of his favored states and pick up Wisconsin. The "Tradesports Scenario" would break as a tie if Iowa goes to Kerry but not Wisconsin or New Mexico.

Bush: Strong - 254; Weak - 22; Total - 276
Kerry: Strong - 242; Weak - 20; Total - 260

In the polls, the setup is much more favorable to Kerry. However, it should be warned that my methodology, which I stick to scrupulously, has been designed to counteract my wishful thinking. As daily tracking polls for critical swing states have begun to proliferate, it makes the results for states like Wisconsin or Florida somewhat arbitrary. These results represent an average of five polls, but the "swing polls" could have come from one source as easily as another, and had different polls met my criteria for inclusion, Bush could be winning several states that he's now losing. Anyhow, as it stands right now, there's a Kerry lead in the electoral college with 299 electoral votes. He is trailing in the popular vote projection by 1.1 million.

Bush: Strong - 202; Weak - 37; Total - 239
Kerry: Strong - 179; Weak - 120; Total 299