Could John Kerry Pull An Upset?

A news report on my local news radio station yesterday indicated that the polls may not be as reliable as they appear. Pollsters have had a hard time finding enough people who are willing to participate in a survey; many of them don't want to be bothered. So they've had to rely on sample groups that are less representative of registered voters as a whole, and they've tried to make up for this by guessing based on previous indicators.

The result? George W. Bush could have a phony lead, and John Kerry may already be doing better than that polling results suggest. Plus, Michael Moore has pointed out that these surveys rely mainly on "likely voters" - a term indicating people who have voted in every presidential election dating back to 1992. There are a whole bunch of new voters, however, who were in grade school in 1992, along with several older lapsed voters, who have not been accounted for in these surveys. These folks are energized by Bush's abysmal performance as President to go out and vote against him. So even if the polls forecast a Bush victory well into October, these new voters - many of them brought into the process through Howard Dean's efforts - could help Kerry produce an upset even more astonishing than the upset of 1948, which returned President Harry Truman to office when many expected he'd be voted out.

I won't compare 1948 to 2004, though. Not only are the circumstances different, but one major difference is key: Truman won because he had the power of the incumbency behind him. Still, you never know what might happen this year, especially considering how the 2000 election played out.

Go ahead and watch tonight's debate.