Road map to victory
Keep an eye on new voters--in big cities, fancy suburbs, college towns, and panhandle counties
After the door knocking and the stump speeches and the rallies that drag into the night, after the fundraising and the phone-banking and the ads that stretch the truth into oblivion, there comes a moment when all that is left to do is pray and wait and watch. And that time is now.
In an election this close, the only real certainty is that hearts will be broken by a few votes here and there. The likely heartbreakers are the millions of newly registered voters who may or may not show up. Gallup polls found that likely voters who voted four years ago favored the president 50 percent to 46 percent. But among those who did not vote in 2000, Kerry is beating Bush 59 percent to 40 percent. It is these new voters who will write the final act to an election for which pins and needles were invented. Here's where to find them:
OHIO: EYE OF THE STORM
Ohio could well be this year's Florida. President Bush won here by 165,019 votes in 2000. Ralph Nader got 117,857. And 94,000 votes were not counted because of ballot controversies. The geographic divide pits Ohio's northeast against the rest of the state. Democrats need to win Cuyahoga County--which includes Cleveland--by about 200,000 votes. Republicans need the southwestern quadrant, from Columbus to Cincinnati, to offset those numbers.
PENNSYLVANIA:'BURBS BATTLE
For Bush, it's the Philadelphia problem. Al Gore won the state by about 205,000 votes by piling up a 348,000-vote margin in Philadelphia that Bush could not overcome, even though the president won 49 of the other 66 counties. The GOP needs moderate Republicans in the Philadelphia suburbs to stick with the president, unlike four years ago, when they abandoned him for Gore. But in the four Republican suburban counties, Democratic registration has jumped an average of 20 percent, while GOP registration is up only slightly.
A Plan B route to a GOP victory would be to run up huge numbers in growing and largely GOP Lancaster County--and pray for rain in Philly.
IOWA: YOUNG HAWKEYES
This is where the president has the best chance of stealing a Gore state from Kerry. He lost by only 4,144 votes in 2000, and polls show the culturally conservative state trending his way. But watch what happens in the big university towns, where record registrations have created an unknown factor. As of mid-October, nearly 12,000 new voters under 25 had registered in Black Hawk County, where the University of Northern Iowa is located. Johnson County (University of Iowa) is up 50 percent, to more than 22,500; Story County (Iowa State) is up 62 percent. Whom do they like, and will they vote?
NEW MEXICO: ALBUQUERQUE
This state had the closest margin in 2000: Gore won by a mere 366 votes. Here the fight is in Bernalillo County, the Albuquerque metro area, where about half of the state's 1.8 million residents live. New registrations have surged, along with early voting. Republicans look to roll up big wins in the south and east--the Texas border counties of Curry, Chaves, Lea, and Eddy. Democrats counter that with an advantage in Santa Fe to the north. The state should go to whoever gets the edge in Bernalillo, which Gore won by only 4,212. A pure tossup.
FLORIDA: REMATCH AND REHASH
In the end, this state's 27 electoral votes will come down to north and west versus east and south and what happens to black turnout. In 2000, south Florida's Broward and Palm Beach counties, the state's second and third largest, together gave Al Gore a 65-to-33 percent advantage. The most populous county, Dade--centered on Miami--gave the vice president a 52.6-to-46.3 percent win. Democrats hope similar advantages this time will help defeat Bush.
Republican strength resides up north in the panhandle counties of Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Okaloosa, a region where Bush won 68-to-30 percent in 2000, and along the Georgia border. While the swing counties along the Interstate 4 corridor from Tampa to Daytona Beach have been viewed as crucial here, experts say victory will more likely rest on which of the two armies on either end of the state can move its troops to the polls.
This story appears in the November 8, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.