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Monday, November 6, 2000 Volume XXV, No. 39
Roswell, New Mexico

In this issue:

Election Eve

Our Friends at Bush 2000

Based only on the geographical focus of the Bush campaign, and the seemingly blissful confidence manifested over the past two to three weeks, our only logical conclusion is that Bush is going to win going away. (As you will read below, our ongoing analysis does now show a Bush win, but not the massive win the Bush team, and numerous poll watching, and poll analysis organizations and websites now expect.)

We sensed about ten days ago that the Bush campaign's private polling must be extremely positive and very consistently so. There is very little else which can be the case AND logically explain the Bush-Cheney campaign itinerary----i.e., they long ago concluded they simply don't have to fight hard in what we would call the true battleground states.

It has seemed that every time we have caught a news story, Bush or Cheney is in California, Washington, Oregon, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and West Virginia. True there have been a few trips to New Mexico, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida, but by and large they have clearly focused on states which have leaned toward Gore, rather than those we would have classified as "toss-ups."

These are the actions of a campaign which either: a) believes it is going to win with more than 400 electoral votes, or b) doesn't know what it is doing. Since we know the latter not to be the case, we must expect a Bush landslide, regardless of our internal analysis.

Again, our only conclusion is that they have information we don't (obviously true)----and that information shows that Bush is going to win very, very comfortably. Without that conclusion, the focus of the Bush campaign would have made very little sense, at least to us.

Instead, it has been Gore-Lieberman whose itinerary has been one which we would have scheduled for Bush: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Florida, and New Hampshire.

One final stab at it

In the final analysis, Bush's "image imprint" (the five fields being: ideology, charisma, leadership, policy communication and perceived success/record) did change enough after strong debate performances to alter his expected results in some states. The "campaign efficiency" dynamic has also changed.

Despite numerous polls and now, many pundits calling this a Bush landslide, the most likely scenario based on our updated formulae, is one similar to the one we described on August 23rd:

"roughly a 48-45 win for Bush, with Nader getting 4½" (but no campaign efficiency quotient for Buchanan, presumed to be forthcoming at that time, ever developed).

We believe Bush-Cheney has spent the money and made the effort necessary to switch Wisconsin, and probably New Hampshire (along with certain changes in the candidate imprint analysis) though not Pennsylvania. All other states will most likely hold as previously projected. There would also be significant vote shifts among the states. Southern state margins will now be significantly higher, e.g. GA will be more than 200K, AL will be about 200K, Tennessee will be more than 50K, etc. Similarly, margins will increase in many Western and Midwestern states. Gore's lead in PA will be bigger than projected, perhaps some what smaller in CA and other big states.

In the final analysis, we cannot see the "400+ electoral votes for Bush forecast by many, nor the 50-44, or 51-41 popular vote margin foreseen by several internet poll watcher sites. The state-by-state analysis still yields a rather narrow result:

Bush 47.66
Gore 45.73
Nader 4.28
Others 2.34

Electoral College Recap

282 256

Final Popular Vote (000)

48,301 46,345 4,336 2,370
(47.66) (45.73) (4.28) (2.34%)

101,352,000 total votes