This may be of some mild interest to readers from abroad, but for the first time in this election, I think Kerry is likely to win, perhaps by a substantial enough margin that it won’t be possible to fudge or undermine the outcome by fraud, and the results may be clear after election day and before the year 2005. The evidence:

(1) The polls, with two weeks to go, continue to show a tie; even Rasmussen Reports had Bush and Kerry tied yesterday, for the first time in months. With 6-10% of the electorate still undecided, it is worth noting that historically undecideds break for the challenger, not the incumbent.

(2) Telephone polls, as an anthropologist has noted, tend to undercount precisely those voters whose demographics make them far more likely to be Democratic voters.

(3) The Democrats have been leading the Republicans in new voter registrations, especially in several of the hotly contested states.

(4) Bush’s approval ratings and level of support remain frightfully low for an incumbent. This increasingly has the feel of Jimmy Carter in 1980, who was, of course, trounced by Ronald Reagan, despite polls showing a fairly close race.

Of course, Sartre said we should live without hope. But that’s a hard way to live. And the hope here is, after all, modest: namely, that the fascist theocrats will be sent packing, and we will return to the ordinary status quo in America of being ruled by reasonably prudent representatives of the ruling class.