Another Decided Decides

My old colleague Steven Johnson, onetime impresario of Feed and Plastic and author of Mind Wide Open, posits an electoral college winner who is also, believe it or not, his own candidate of choice. Prediction:

My gut right now is that Kerry will win fairly decisively—not in the popular vote, but in the ultimate electoral college tally. It won't be Reagan/Mondale, but neither will it be 2000 redux. My best guess is Kerry wins 299 to 239: he picks up the big three (Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania) and grabs Wisconsin along the way. Bush gets pretty much everything else that's seriously in play right now: Iowa, Arkansas, New Mexico, Colorado. It's enough of a margin that there's not a major recount battle, even if a handful of those states show less than a percentage point of difference. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Bush won the popular vote, though I suspect Kerry will squeak out with that as well. So let's say the final tally is 299/239 and 49%/48.5% both in Kerry's favor. Check back in a week to see how I did.

At the moment, Electoral-Vote.com has a moderate Bush win, though the trend over the last couple days is toward Kerry. I am on record in various places as expecting a Bush win for very basic reasons, but prophecy was given to fools. My only prediction anymore: All this talk about another popular/electoral split is a lot of hooey. People are gearing up to fight the last war, and they're going to be disappointed. Whoever gets the electoral vote will also get at least the popular plurality.

So there!

Update: As the original Jason Bourne notes in the comments, Electoral-Vote.com's actual prediction page has a Kerry win. I was only looking at today's count. I missed the prediction page's count because my eyes were drawn to the word "Depress" in the button labelled "Depress for current map."