by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

So, here's my problem this year. First, all of these polls are aimed at likely, uncommitted voters based on the assumption (which is actually pretty good) that the committed pools for each candidate are MOL even. However, "pretty good" is not perfect, and there is a small, but significant, subset of Republican voters who are not as firm in their support of Bush as he might hope. My mother, who was born before Hoover (that's as close as she'll let me come to admitting her actual age...*grin*) and has been firmly Republican for as long as I can remember, is considering voting for Nader this year. It's not a vote for Kerry so much as it is a vote against Bush. Thing is, a lot of her friends (those who are left, that is) are thinking in the same vein. These ironclad republicans just plain don't like George Bush.

The second reason I am looking at these polls with some skepticism has to do with the number of new voters registered this year. There has been a surge in new voter registrations through out the country. Now, call me crazy, but I think that the vast majority of these new voters are going to vote for Kerry. Most Republicans have already registered. Unregistered, but eligible, potential voters tend, for the most part, to fall into the Democrat's core constituency rather than the Republicans. These tend to be the people down on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladders. If they show up at the polls in the same numbers they have been adding to the voter registration rolls, we could have a surprize lop-sided victory for the D's. I personally think that this actually likely to happen on November 2nd. What will be really interesting is to see if this will carry over to the Senate and Congressional races. Very often inexperienced voters will only vote for the top of the ticket. All the rest of those choices become overwhelming...so they pass on the rest of the ballot.

Now, we can't become complacent. I think I'm going to have Tuesday off, so I will go vote early and then Granddaughter and I will go down and volunteer to do what we can to get out the vote. I will do what I can to un-elect George Bush. I know that he will ranked with Millard Filmore and Herbert Hoover in the pantheon of Loser Presidents. We simply cannot afford another four years of his mismanagement of this great country's affairs.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005