The final countdown

All week, if not all month, people have been asking me to predict who I think will win. In a sense it is flattering that people think that I might have some special insight into the election, but the truth is that everyone has access to the same information that I do over the internet.

I think that, more than anything else, the people I have spoken to want reassurance or hope. Almost everyone I have spoken to is petrified of another four years of President Bush in the White House and wants to know if there is any chance -- please -- that he be defeated.

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I am not planning to make a true prediction for a number of very understandable reasons. The first of these is that making predictions is a mug's game for a columnist, and we run the very real risk of ending up looking a bit silly if our predictions are off the mark. The second is the fact that it is very possible that my own bias interferes with my judgement and keeps me from looking at the hard facts as clearly and objectively as I should.

The final reason is that anything could happen even in the four days between now and election day to throw everything off and change the likely outcome beyond anything anyone could possibly predict.

This is why predictions made too far in advance are more or less meaningless. In this day and age there are simply too many variables to accurately predict anything six months down the line. Now, of course there are many people who will predict a winner six or twelve months in advance, and many of them will pick correctly. It's a fifty-fifty shot after all. But anyone who confidently tells you that they called the election for Kerry or Bush six months ago is simply being unrealistic about the many variables in a modern day political campaign.

Six months is too far ahead. Frankly, one week is too far ahead. The landscape changes on a day to day basis and a slight shift here or there could make all the difference. Even with four days left it is still difficult to call how things will pan out and how things will look on election day.

In 2000, it wasn't until the last couple of days that the polls showed Gore closing in on Bush, predicting the ultimate closeness of the finish. In fact, Bush was so confident of victory that he took a couple of days off campaigning and it was Gore's last gasp whirlwind campaigning on the eve of the election that helped to swing undecided and independent voters to his side, resulting in his winning the popular vote by half a million.

So many things could still happen between now and election day. There could be a terrorist strike somewhere in the US. Bush could pull Osama like a rabbit out of his hat on the eve of the election. Bush could land a seriously low blow against Kerry that halts his momentum in its tracks. Kerry could commit some horrendous gaffe that could cause his popularity to plummet. Any of these could turn the election decisively.

But -- and please bear in mind that this is not a prediction -- if none of the above transpires -- and it's a big if -- then Kerry is in with a decent chance of being elected the 44th president of the United States.

One thing that I will state with some confidence is that no one should take the current polls that indicate a slight Bush lead too seriously. The polls are skewed towards Republicans for a number of reasons and undercount first-time and minority voters, both groups which vote predominantly Democratic.

It is worth recalling that in 2000, of the 41 polls that were run the last week before the election, 39 of them predicted a victory for Bush by an average margin of 3.6 percent. In the end, Gore actually won the popular vote by a razor-thin margin.

Besides which, as 2000 showed, the share of the popular vote really isn't that important. The thing that matters is how the candidates are faring in the battleground states that will decide the election. The latest indications are that Kerry is pulling slightly ahead in the battleground states, and has a slight but perceptible lead in likely electoral college votes.

One theory that I have found persuasive is that the election may not in the end be as close as the polls predict, and that in the last few days the voters will shift decisively one way or the other, as happened in the 1980 election won by Ronald Reagan. This analysis suggests that many undecided voters will not make up their minds until the very last moment -- perhaps even in the polling both -- and there do seem to be signs that undecided and independent voters are trending Kerry's way.

But this is all mere speculation, influenced greatly, no doubt, by my immense desire to see President Bush sent packing back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

More crucially, it seems as though the Bush team still has plenty of dirty tricks up its sleeve for the home stretch. Internal Republican polling suggests that the key to a Democratic victory is minority turn-out, and so the Republicans have put in place a nation-wide effort to intimidate and disenfranchise minority voters in the hope of depressing the turn-out.

If these efforts prove more successful than the Democratic efforts to get minorities to the polls in record numbers, then the Republicans will stand a good chance of winning.

There have been credible reports of attempted voter suppression and intimidation in the battleground states of Florida and Ohio, and all sorts of underhanded shenanigans -- from malfunctioning voting machines to electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail to missing or confusing absentee ballots -- have been detected that suggest that the fix is in.

Both sides have armies of lawyers deployed the length and breadth of the US and if the election does end up close there is every possibility that recounts and legal challenges will delay the determination of the winner as in 2000.

No one is going to take anything lying down this time. The question is, who is more motivated this year. More motivated to get their people to the polls, to ensure that the polls are fair, to ensure that no irregularities are permitted to give the other side an unfair advantage.

I think it's the Dems who want it more this year, but if recent history is anything to go by, the Republicans will stop at nothing to ensure victory -- by fair means or foul. I suspect that it might be difficult for the Republicans to win if they fight fair -- but then again when have the Republicans ever fought fair?

The rest of the world can just sit and anxiously watch CNN and BBC to find out the result. The US ambassador recently asked me who people in Bangladesh were rooting for. I told him that the breakdown was probably something like 90 percent to 10 percent in favour of Kerry -- but I was sugar-coating it a little -- in truth I suspect that it might be hard to find ten people in the country who prefer Bush, let alone ten percent. In this we are joined, according to a recent poll, by most of the people of the world.

This election could have a decisive impact on how Americans are viewed in the rest of the world. The reputation of the country beyond its borders has never been lower, and now is the opportunity for Americans to either cement their negative image in the eyes of the world or to demonstrate what their Declaration of Independence calls "a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind."

Let's hope that they make the right choice and that if they do that the election result reflects the will of the people.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.