BUSH WINS

The Associated Press is now reporting that John Kerry has conceded the presidential race to George W. Bush.

"Congratulations, Mr. President," Kerry said in the conversation described by sources as lasting less than five minutes. One of the sources was Republican, the other a Democrat.

The Democratic source said Bush called Kerry a worthy, tough and honorable opponent. Kerry told Bush the country was too divided, the source said, and Bush agreed. "We really have to do something about it," Kerry said according to the Democratic official.

Kerry is expected to make a concession speech at 2 PM today. The President will speak at 3 PM. In the end, Kerry and his advisors must have looked at the numbers in Ohio and realized that there was no realistic way to crunch the numbers so as to create a scenario whereby Kerry would overtake the President's 130,000 vote lead. In addition, they had to consider the fact that the President was leading in the popular vote by more than 3.5 million. The final electoral tally will take a little while to sort out, although it appears the President will win Nevada and New Mexico as well as Ohio.

So why did Bush win? Why did so many pundits (me included) get it wrong? Like all prognostications, mine was based on certain assumptions. Those assumptions were as follows:

1. The Democratic base was more energized (primarily by Bush-hatred) than the Republicans.

2. The Democrats' ground game (get-out-the-vote efforts) would do better than the GOP.

3. More young people than normal would turn out, and they would trend towards Kerry.

All of these turned out to be wrong. The GOP base turned out with at least as much energy as the Democrats and their GOTV efforts were at least as good. Finally, young people didn't turn out as heavily as many thought and my guess is that many more young folks voted for Bush than most experts would have believed.

I was dead wrong...and I couldn't be happier about it.