IT'S THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE, STUPID

Don't take the title of this post as literally directed at you (the stupid part, I mean). But I think this election, like 2000, does boil down to the result in the Electoral College (they all do, of course, but in most elections the Electoral College merely validates what the popular vote indicates). With the daily tracking polls showing Bush leading by only two or three points, and the mainstream polls (generally conducted over three-day periods) all show more or less the same thing, one needs to keep in mind this is a state-by-state contest. There are a number of websites that have Electoral College maps and calculators. The link provided is one of the better sites I've found. The webmaster of the site leans left (so far as I can tell), but the way the site is built makes it easy to see what states are in play. For past election results, check out www.uselectionatlas.org.