The American Election

The American Presidential Election is over... I think. Senator Kerry has conceded to President Bush, but then so did Senator Gore, in 2000. As I write, on 'screaming deadline', there are still three states which haven't been decided, Ohio, Iowa, and New Mexico. By 3:30 am on ITN's election night programme I had called Iowa and New Mexico for the President, but Ohio was still too close to call in our view (although Fox, and then NBC, had done so) by the time we went off air at 6:00 am.

At this moment, with 100% of precincts counted in Ohio, but not the 175,000 'provisional' (read 'challenged') ballots estimated by the Ohio Secretary of State, and an unknown number of absentee ballots, including many from overseas, these uncounted votes could tip Ohio from the President's column into Kerry's, and call Kerry to the White House.

In any case, it looks like President Bush has decisively won the popular vote by more than 3.5 million votes, unlike 2000, when Senator Gore had 540,000 more votes than Bush. But in Ohio, if it does go finally to Bush, it will be by around 100,000 votes, a quarter of one percent of the Ohio total vote, and that will be enough to re-elect the President.

Turnout in the America election was at recent elections' record levels, around 60%. The last British election the turnout was 59%. Our current polls show that the 2005 turnout here may well be even a lower turnout than in 2001, and may be worse than the Americans'.

At the moment, it looks like 51% for Bush, 48% for Kerry, and under 1% for Nader and other candidates. In the 'two-horse race' between Bush and Kerry, 15 out of the final 16 polls published on the 1st and 2nd of November had 51% to 49% within a three point margin of error, and actually with two percent either way, and three out of four had the result of the popular vote to within one percent.

This was the pattern of the polls from the start of the election. In August, before the Republican National Convention and before Labour Day, the first Monday in September, Kerry had racked up a 2% lead over Bush. But the RNC proved to be a love-in, with even the Vice President, Dick Cheney, the ultimate Washington insider but not a very user-friendly chap, going over like gangbusters, as the Americans say. This represented a 1% swing from the 2000 election result after all the chads were counted, or not.

After the convention however, Bush pulled into the lead, and stayed there consistently with the narrowest of margins over the challenger, and on three occasions in October, actually leading by less than a percentage point. Until the end of October, when the last 16 polls, as noted above in the text, and below in the table, brought them into a 51% to 49% final stretch finish. The last 7 although rounding to a 2% lead as shown in the table, when carried out to a decimal point, separated the two men by just 0.9%.

Americans don't use 'swing', so beloved of all British psephologists. We calculated our own swing, and the table indicates how tiny the swings were during the campaign, almost all until the very end accounted for by the three Presidential debates, the first on 30 September, the second on 8 October, and the 13th. The dog that didn't bark in the night seems to be Senator John Edwards, the Democrats' Vice Presidential hopeful, who not only didn't carry a single Southern state, but the Bush swing in the south seems to have been greater in the south than in the rest of the USA.

It was a great election for the British political junkies like myself and nearly every MP I know, as most, if not all, MPs I know follow the American elections closely. Many were at the American Embassy party, and other celebrations on the night. It started as a cheery night for the Democrats, and ended with a big hurrah for the Republicans.

The losers in the poll stakes seemed to be the exit poll, which by a narrow margin forecast a Kerry victory, although within the margin of error, Zogby, whose 1996 and 2000 calls were excellent but who called this election for Kerry with 311 electoral votes (270 to win) at just after midnight, the Internet polls (Harris's telephone poll was much closer to the result than their Internet poll), and YouGov's final poll was a three point lead to Kerry instead of the Bush three point win, and took the wooden spoon for the worst call of any of the final 16 polls in the final few days.

Analysis by Robert Worcester

This article was prepared for the next issue of Parliamentary Monitor.