Presidential race – state of play

I am playing catch up today so here is the last of three posts. This one was actually written today.
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Post-debate what is the state of play in the Presidential election? It remains as it has all year too close to call.

Kerry won all three debates. The results from the polls taken following the October 13 debate were: A CNN/Gallup instant poll found Kerry the clear winner, 52% to 39%. A CBS News poll of uncommitted voters who watched the debate found Kerry won, 39% to 25%, with 36% calling it a tie. An ABC News Instant Poll of voters who watched the debate also found Kerry the winner, 42% to 41%. (Note: The survey group was 38% Republican, 30% Democrat.)

My intuition all year has been that Bush would win in a close race. The debates have shaken that gut feeling. Nonetheless the polls overall still point to Bush being ahead.

The race remains close. The latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll has the race tied at 48% while three other polls out today show small Bush leads. All the major Presidential polls can be found here on Polling Report.com.

In terms of keeping up with the race the two best sites on the state by state battles are http://2.004k.com/ and Current Electoral Vote Predictor, the latter having an excellent Electoral College Map.

The polls show different results largely because they use different methodologies and assumptions. One of the best discussions of the issues I have run across is this one from the Scripps survey research center. The findings from their poll show that if the U.S. had the Australian system of compulsory voting, John Kerry would be the easy winner.