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Over the past several weeks,
your Crystal Ball has received several dozen e-mails from Bush supporters, chiding us for not declaring the election and certifying their strongly held view that President Bush was the inevitable winner.
Now, to their regret and sadness, our friends on the right have their answer, and perhaps they can see why we wrote in mid-September that “we insist the election is not over yet, despite the impressive efforts of many to bring down the curtain six weeks early.” Yes, conservatives may well be correct that, in the end, Bush will win—but it wasn’t proven by the presidential face-off we all witnessed on Sept. 30.
The first presidential debate has changed the calculus of 2004—at least temporarily—and so at this stage of an extremely competitive campaign, President Bush no longer appears to be the certain choice of voters on Nov. 2. Caution is in order, since this new reality can be transformed quickly by a different result in the second or third debate.
In the first debate, President Bush’s unsteady performance sent some of his unsettled backers packing, and the challenger, Senator Kerry, welcomed them onto his campaign bus, having sold them for the moment on his alternative. In the Newsweek poll released Saturday, there was a stunning turnaround of campaign fortunes. Bush had led 49 percent
94.1%