Florida. After lagging narrowly in the polls for several weeks, John Kerry's acquired a narrow 50 percent to 49 percent lead, according to an October 17 poll conducted by Survey USA. Under the circumstances, the "ground game" -- get-out-the-vote efforts and legal and other battles to get votes counted -- will likely be decisive and are, in fact, already under way. So-called early voting began on Monday, and problems are already popping up. Orange County's computers crashed briefly, blocking access to the list of registered voters. Several Broward Country polling places were unable to link their computers to the database that was supposed to be used to verify voter eligibility, forcing election workers to rely on paper lists and calls to the supervisor's office to get by. Shelley Vana, a state representative from Palm Beach County -- site of the infamous "butterfly ballots" that cost Gore the 2000 election -- reported that her absentee ballot was missing one of two pages. "This is not a good start," she told the Associated Press.
Turnout for early voting has been high, with The New York Times reporting, for example, that more than 5 percent of Tampa's Hillsborough County electorate cast ballots on Monday. Kerry was in-state on Tuesday, hitting George W. Bush hard over flu-vaccine shortages. "Now George Bush is telling us you've got to get lucky to get health care in America," Kerry told rally-goers in Orlando after raking the president over the coals for misleading the public about Iraq.
Iowa. With the battle for Iowa emerging as one of the tightest races in the contest, both campaigns are lavishing the state with their candidates' time. In last two weeks alone, the president has visited the state three times; Kerry and John Edwards combined for five visits, including a joint appearance in Des Moines, and Vice President Dick Cheney has dropped by as well. The top of the Bush-Cheney ticket has already spent more time in Iowa than its 2000 incarnation spent in October and November combined, a clear sign that the GOP is serious about snatching the state that it lost by just 4,144 votes.
For the most part, the Republicans' personal visits have focused not on the reliably conservative, more sparsely populated western side of the state but on the urban Democratic strongholds closer to the Mississippi River. Making inroads in these cities and their redder neighboring towns will be just as crucial to the Bush-Cheney campaign as ramping up the turnout out west, notes University of Iowa political-science professor David Redlawsk, not “to convert Gore voters in those areas [but] to mobilize existing Republicans who might or might not have shown up last time around.” In Black Hawk County, for example, where the president campaigned the day after the second presidential debate, Bush lost to Al Gore by 6,644 votes, a margin eclipsing the small Democratic lead in voter registration at the time; in the seven counties bordering Black Hawk, Bush won by 2,016 votes, but failed to capitalize on the substantial Republican registration advantage.
New Hampshire. A Concord Monitor poll shows Kerry with a slight lead over Bush (with the margin of error at 4 percent). Regardless of the close numbers, Kerry pulled ahead of Bush among undeclared voters, according to the American Research Group (ARG), a New Hampshire-based polling company. With 35 percent registered as undeclared in the state, this critical group will make a difference in the upcoming election. ARG polls currently show 53 percent of the undeclared voters supporting Kerry; 40 percent support Bush. Meanwhile, Edwards, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and Laura Bush are among those slated to speak this week in New Hampshire.
New Mexico. For a state with only five electoral votes, New Mexico is being treated to a steady stream of appearances by candidates and major players from both parties, as this race is shaping up to be just as close as the 366-vote differential that existed in 2000. Kerry chose to prepare for his final debate last week in Santa Fe. Not to be outdone, the entire Bush family spent time in New Mexico: Laura Bush in Las Cruces with daughter Barbara and the president in Hobbs with Jenna.
Bad news for Kerry came with the September 28 ruling by the New Mexico Supreme Court that allowed independent candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot. Kerry however, was buoyed by strong debate performances. A Gallup Poll of more than 673 likely voters showed Bush with a 50 percent to 47 percent lead over Kerry, but a Hart Research Poll of 802 voters gave Kerry a 49 percent to 45 percent advantage. Yet a third poll, conducted by the Albuquerque Journal, showed Kerry leading Bush by 3 percentage points 46 percent to 43 percent.
Absentee and early in-person balloting have already begun here, and it is estimated that by election day, more than one-third of New Mexico's likely voters will have already voted. In 2000, Bush took a healthy lead into election day from absentee and early in-person votes, but he was caught by Gore, making a high voter turnout a must for both candidates. Kerry appears to have an advantage here, as there were massive voter-registration drives over the summer in urban and minority areas, both of which are likely to lean toward Kerry.
Ohio. In the final two weeks leading up to the election, Kerry's playing a studied game of campaign chess here, carefully reaching out to rural and more conservative voters one day and trying to motivate his urban base the next.
The senator spent last Saturday in southeastern Ohio, the most swinging of regions in the state. The poor and socially conservative Appalachian hill country went for Bush in 2000, but narrowly supported Bill Clinton in both 1992 and 1996. Though Kerry will probably lose here, he's fighting to keep his numbers high enough to offset Bush's natural advantage in this God-fearing, gun-loving region.
On his way to a well-attended front-porch rally hosted by an 89-year-old farmer, for example, Kerry tried to tout his own rural bona fides and stopped at a local shop to buy a license for a hunting trip near Youngstown later this week. According to The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Kerry approached store owners Paul and Debra McKnight and asked, in folksy down-home drawl, “Can I get me a hunting license here?”
On Sunday, Kerry traveled to the state capital to do his best to energize the base. In 2000, when Bush won Ohio by 160,000 votes, 100,000 registered black voters failed to show up to the polls on election day. Fully aware that African Americans' motivation to make it to the polls on election day might tip the state (and the country) for Kerry, the candidate gave a biblically tinged 25-minute address to a predominately black Baptist church in Columbus.
Thanks to the combined efforts of liberal “527s,” nearly 300,000 likely Democrats have registered to vote in Ohio in the last year alone.
Pennsylvania. With the president trailing here (a Survey USA poll conducted over the weekend has Kerry beating him by 6 points, 51 percent to 45 percent), indications are mounting that the Bush campaign is ratcheting down its efforts in Pennsylvania and shifting resources elsewhere. The rumor, kicked off by a report last week from the New York Daily News, gained new credence Friday when The Hill's Tipsheet cited “a source with close ties to the campaign” confirming that the Bush-Cheney team was pulling out. They've reduced ad buys in mid-state and eastern TV stations for the last several weeks, and, while they're maintaining substantial buys in western Pennsylvania media markets, that is likely due to the fact that ads airing in Pittsburgh are also seen in Ohio and West Virginia.
Democrats tempted to fall complacent (a temptation that's only amplified by reports that over 100,000 new voters have been registered in heavily Democratic Philadelphia since April) should realize that GOP electoral shenanigans don't appear to be ebbing along with the intensity of the Bush campaign's official efforts in the state. Yesterday the Philadelphia Daily News reported that the president's Pennsylvania campaign staff made last-minute requests to relocate 63 polling places in Philadelphia -- 53 of which are in areas where white voters comprise under 10 percent of the total voting population. While a Philadelphia voter- registration administrator has said that those requests were made too late for the City Commission to consider them, in Scranton's Lackawanna County last week the newly GOP-controlled board of commissioners succeeded in moving 21 polling places, all of which were in districts where Democrats comprised 60% or more of voters. Ten thousand voters are said to be affected by the changes, and some small percentage of those may be thwarted in voting on November 2 due either to confusion or inability to reach the new locations.
Compiled by the Prospect staff. Click here to read the previous edition of “Purple People Watch.”
