The WSJ Guide to the 2004 Election

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Following the Election Returns
An hour-by-hour guide to tonight's results--plus my predictions.

Tuesday, November 2, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST


I hope those of you interested in the election got a good night's sleep. This year the networks say they have learned from the mistakes they made in 2000, when they prematurely called Florida first for Al Gore and then for George W. Bush. As a result, they will exercise an abundance of caution in calling states and declaring winners of key Senate and gubernatorial races.

But this correspondent will tread where others fear to. In consultation with Henry Olsen, my good friend of 20 years' standing, and someone who knows more about American politics than anyone I know other than Michael Barone (legendary author of the Almanac of American Politics), I am making the following predictions:

Popular vote: Bush 50.0%, Kerry 48.5%, Nader 1.0%, others 0.5%.

Electoral vote: Bush 296, Kerry 242.

Battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin for Bush; Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania for Kerry.

The polls are pretty consistent. Mr. Bush is at 48% or above in all of them that push leaners. Now that Zogby has reported a tied race on Monday night, no national poll of consequence has Mr. Kerry in the lead. (Marist has him up 49% to 48%, but it would be historic if Marist were the only pollster to call the election correctly.) More than half have the race in a tie, and a couple have Bush in front by a few. I would normally give the race to Mr. Bush by three points, but I forecast a slightly tighter race because the few undecided votes are likely to break in Mr. Kerry's direction since they have resisted going with the incumbent for so long.

The Republicans currently control the Senate 51-48, with Jim Jeffords of Vermont sitting as an "independent" who caucuses with the Democrats. There's pretty strong agreement on which seats are in play, and which ones are likely to switch parties. Everyone thinks Illinois will switch to the Democrats and Georgia will become a Republican pickup. That leaves the following seats in doubt.

Republican seats: Alaska, Colorado, Oklahoma.
Democratic seats: Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota.

In addition, Republicans are worried about Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, but he is likely to survive a lackluster re-election effort with about 53% of the vote. National trends do not much affect Senate races, unless there is a big turnout-induced shift from the presidential race.

I predict that Democrats will pick up seats in Alaska and Colorado but fall short in Oklahoma. Democrats will lose the mother of all Senate battles in South Dakota, but only after several days of recounts and court battles. They will also lose in Louisiana, which has not voted for a Republican senator since Reconstruction. But the GOP will have to wait until next month because its candidate, Rep. David Vitter, will fall short of the 50% showing he needs on Tuesday to avoid a runoff. The GOP will also narrowly pick up seats in Florida and North Carolina, along with South Carolina, where Democrats never really had a chance to keep the seat of retiring Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Holllings in what is now one of the most strongly Republican states in the country. The seat will symbolically shift from the Senate's leading protectionist to Jim DeMint, who has been an outspoken advocate of free trade during his House tenure. So that's five seats shifting from Democratic to Republican, and three shifting the other way, leaving us with 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and 1 Independent, and the Louisiana December runoff another likely Republican pickup.

In the House, The Republicans will retain control regardless of who wins the presidency. The GOP starts the election with 229 seats; the Democrats have 205 seats and there is one independent (again from Vermont). I think the Republicans will gain a net gain of five seats and wind up with a 234-200 majority. The entire GOP gain will come from a successful gerrymander of Texas' congressional map, orchestrated by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

We've listed states that went for George W. Bush four years ago in red and those that went for Al Gore in blue, followed by the state's electoral vote count and letters indicating governor and senate races, with the incumbent party in the appropriate color. For example, "Vermont 3 GS" indicates that the Green Mountain State went for Al Gore in 2000 and has a governor's race with a Republican incumbent and a Senate race with a Democratic incumbent.

6 p.m.


[Indiana 11 GS
Kentucky 8 S
Polls close in these two states at 6 p.m. local time, which means the parts of the states that are in the Eastern time zone will end voting ahead of the rest of the country. President Bush should win both states, but compare the percentage of the vote being won by John Kerry this year with Al Gore's numbers from four years ago (41% in Indiana, 41.4% in Kentucky). If Mr. Kerry is doing better than Mr. Gore did in any state, it could be a sign that the vaunted Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts are bearing fruit.

Kentucky will also be an early warning indicator of whether the GOP could lose control of the Senate. Sen. Jim Bunning has been plagued with verbal gaffes and he will likely win by six points or less over Democrat Dan Mongiardo. If Mr. Bunning trails, it will be a long night for the GOP in the Senate.

In the House, Kentucky has one barn-burner of a race. Republican Anne Northup has held a Democratic district that includes Louisville for four terms, always winning with less than 53%. If she has a tighter race or loses this time, it will an all-smiles night for Democrats.

Republicans haven't won a governor's race in Indiana since 1984, and this year they face a Democratic incumbent, Joseph Kernan. If former Bush budget chief Mitch Daniels can win here, it will provide a good portent for the GOP and show that an association with the Bush economic record is no handicap. In Indiana, the key House race is in the Ninth District (the Bloomington area). Democratic Rep. Baron Hill could lose to Republican Mike Sodrel. A Sodrel win will indicate the GOP is likely to gain House seats this year. The Hoosier State's Senate race is a foregone conclusion; Evan Bayh cruises to re-election.

7 p.m.

Georgia 15 S
New Hampshire 4 GS
South Carolina 8 S
Vermont 3 GS
Virginia 13
South Carolina will begin to give us a feel for how the Senate is going. I predict Rep. Jim DeMint will pick up Fritz Hollings's seat for the GOP, but a Democratic win would disappoint Republican hopes of making significant gains. Republican Johnny Isakson should easily pick up Georgia's seat, now held by Democrat Zell Miller, and Sens. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) and Pat Leahy (D., Vt.) will be re-elected easily.

New Hampshire and Vermont are the only states that elect governors to two-year terms, and both have freshman Republicans seeking re-election. Republican Craig Benson has a decent lead in the Granite State. In Vermont, Republican Gov. Jim Douglas has won plaudits for turning the state away from the liberalism of Howard Dean, his predecessor, and is expected to win.

As for the presidential race, New Hampshire may be John Kerry's best chance to pick up a state President Bush won in 2000--but its four electoral votes are unlikely to be decisive. The rest of these states will almost certainly play to type: Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia going for Mr. Bush, and Vermont for Mr. Kerry.

7:30 p.m.

North Carolina 15 GS
Ohio 20 S
West Virginia 5 G
Expect a long. bloody night in Ohio, where dueling teams of Democratic and Republican lawyers have spent the past several weeks in court trying to squeeze some advantage out of the state's election rules. We may see lawsuits over polling hours, provisional ballots and challengers to voters--and that's if the state isn't that close. More imaginative legal theories will be trotted out if the final result can be overturned by what is expected to be a flood of provisional ballots. Meanwhile, North Carolina and West Virginia should go to Mr. Bush.

North Carolina Democrats have hopes of electing Erskine Bowles, who lost the 2002 Senate race to Elizabeth Dole, in the race to succeed Sen. John Edwards. A key North Carolina House race is in the far western 11th District, where Democrat Patsy Keever has a chance of an upset against GOP Rep. Charlie Taylor. Expect easy victories for GOP Sen. George Voinovich in Ohio, Democratic Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina and Democrat Joe Manchin, who is running for governor of West Virginia.

8 p.m.

Alabama 9 S
Connecticut 7 S
Delaware 3 G
District of Columbia 3
Florida 27 S
Illinois 21 S
Kansas 6 S
Maine 4
Maryland 10 S
Massachusetts 12
Michigan 17
Mississippi 6
Missouri 11 GS
New Jersey 15
North Dakota 3 GS
Oklahoma 7 S
Pennsylvania 21 S
Tennessee 11
Texas 34
By now, some clear trends on which party is winning should be emerging.

Florida, which went through such national embarrassment in 2000 during its 36-day recount, has decided to play it safe this year. Its officials will not release any vote totals until the entire state (including the Panhandle counties that close at 8 p.m. Eastern) has voted. In the end, color Florida red for President Bush again, and this time by a significantly larger margin than the 537-vote spread of 2000. I predict Republicans add to their Senate numbers with a win for former Bush cabinet official Mel Martinez, who is likely to benefit from a massive ethnic pride turnout in his bid to become the state's first Hispanic senator.

Florida, along with Ohio and Pennsylvania, is one of the three essential electoral prizes in the race for president. If Mr. Kerry wins any two of those three, he will be in a strong position to defeat President Bush (though Mr. Bush could still prevail depending on how the Upper Midwest states, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, come in).

Missouri is a must-win state for the Republicans for president. If the race is close, look for Republicans to revive allegations of voter fraud and irregularities that got some ink in 2000. The GOP is also trying to capture the governor's mansion with Secretary of State Matt Blunt. The Democratic candidate, Auditor Claire McCaskill, is slightly favored. If she loses, Democrats are likely to have a bad night in several Midwest states.

The other big presidential prize in this cohort of states is Pennsylvania. The Bush campaign is bullish; columnist Robert Novak reports that it dropped one million pieces of pro-life literature on Sunday in churches in this culturally conservative state. Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling even hobbled out on stage in a Pittsburgh rally yesterday to declare his support for President Bush. If Bush does win here, he will be a prohibitive favorite to win a second term. But the massive ground game run by Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell is likely to produce an unprecedented 400,000-vote margin for Mr. Kerry in Philadelphia, a city that has as many registered voters as it has adults over the age of 18. Despite charges of voter fraud, the final victor in the Keystone State is likely to be Mr. Kerry.

The massive get-out-the-vote effort by Democrats in Pennsylvania will also blunt the impact of a skillful Republican gerrymander of House seats. GOP candidates are trying to pick up Democrat-held seats that eluded them in 2002 in Philadelphia and Harrisburg. They are likely to fall short.

Michigan is likely to be another heartbreaker for President Bush. Mr. Kerry panicked when he saw a Bush surge last week and held last-minute rallies in Detroit. He needn't have worried. Michigan's unemployment rate is 6.8%, among the highest in the country. General Motors is on the verge of a new round of layoffs, and the state lacks the ancestral Republican ties that are likely to keep Ohio, another economically weak state, in the GOP column this year. The remainder of these states will likely go for the same presidential party as in 2000.

A key Senate race is in Oklahoma, where Republican ex-Rep. Tom Coburn is favored to beat Democratic Rep. Brad Carson and become the become the conservative burr under the saddle of both Democratic and Republican Senate leaders.

The other Senate seats in this batch of states are snoozers. GOP Senator Arlen Specter has a 20-point lead in Pennsylvania over Rep. Joe Hoeffel, though his final lead will likely be in single digits. Democrat Barack Obama is a prohibitive favorite against voluble conservative Alan Keyes in Illinois. Other easy Senate victors will be Richard Shelby (R., Ala.), Chris Dodd (D., Conn.), Sam Brownback (R., Kan.), Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), Kit Bond (R., Mo.) and Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.).

Democrats may lose their lone House member from Kansas. If Rep. Dennis Moore goes down, it will be a bad night in the House for Democrats.

Govs. Ruth Ann Minner (D., Del) and John Hoeven (R., N.D.) are expected to win re-election.

8:30 p.m.

Arkansas 6 S
Bill Clinton put in some last-minute campaigning here, which he didn't do in 2000 for Al Gore. But the state still leans towards Bush. Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln is coasting to an easy second-term win.

9 p.m.

Arizona 10 S
Colorado 9 S
Louisiana 9 S
Minnesota 10
Nebraska 5
New Mexico 5
New York 31 S
Rhode Island 4
South Dakota 3 S
Wisconsin 10 S
Wyoming 3
Three crucial Senate races are decided at this hour. South Dakota, which has been a dead heat throughout the campaign, features former Rep. John Thune, a Republican, challenging Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Over $25 million has flowed into a state with fewer than 700,000 people to decide the country's premier Senate race. Once again, the decision may hinge on the American Indian vote, which decided the state's photo-finish 2002 Senate race in favor of Democrat Tim Johnson. Questions about voting irregularities on the Indian reservations have cropped up again this year.

Colorado pits Ken Salazar, the state's attorney general, against beer baron Pete Coors. Mr. Coors has run a disappointing campaign and trails in a state that now looks as if President Bush will win it without breaking too much of a sweat.

Louisiana's Senate contest is run under the strangest rules of the 2004 election. GOP Rep. David Vitter, seeking to replace retiring Democratic Sen. John Breaux, must get more than 50% of the vote to win re-election today. If he doesn't (as appears likely), he will face the top Democratic vote getter in an early December runoff. If control of the Senate is still in doubt, this race would then see a tidal wave of spending by both parties.

In the House, Republicans appear likely to retain the marginal rural district in northern Arizona they just barely won in 2002 with Rick Renzi. If he loses, or if President Bush is pressed hard in Arizona, it will be a sign that the GOP is wearing out its welcome in normally simpatico Western territory. In New Mexico, GOP incumbent Heather Wilson has won four straight elections with less than 55% of the vote. If she loses this year, it will show continued GOP weakness with Hispanic voters. Ditto for the vacant Second District House seat, which Democrats have hopes of winning based on the fact that one out of nine potential voters in the district was newly registered this year. Look for Republicans to retain both seats.

In the South Dakota House race, incumbent Democrat Stephanie Herseth is struggling to win more than the 51% of the vote she won against Republican Larry Diedrich in a June special election. But odds slightly favor Ms. Herseth, who if Mr. Daschle loses will quickly become the state's leading Democrat.

In the presidential race, New Mexico, Wisconsin and to a lesser extent Minnesota are Gore states that are within reach for President Bush. If he loses Ohio, he'll need Wisconsin and one other Upper Midwest state to win re-election. Sens. John McCain (R., Ariz), Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Russ Feingold (D., Wis.) are safe for re-election.

10 p.m.

Idaho 4 S
Iowa 7 S
Montana 3 G
Nevada 5 S
Utah 5 GS
We now enter a boring patch of predictable states. With the exception of Iowa, which is skin tight and will play a crucial role in the presidential race, there are no surprises here. In Idaho, Republican Senator Mike Crapo doesn't even have a Democratic opponent. In Nevada, Republican Rep. Jon Porter has a competitive race for re-election but is still favored. Mr. Bush seems to have opened up a clear lead in this critical swing state, which it has voted for the presidential winner in every election since 1980. Idaho, Montana and Utah went for Mr. Bush by 39.6%, 25% and 40.5% respectively in 2000, and he'll carry them easily again.

Sens. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Robert Bennett (R., Utah) will easily be re-elected. Democrats may pick up the governorships of Montana and, less likely, Utah.

11 p.m.

California 55 S
Hawaii 4 S
Oregon 7 S
Washington 11 GS
With the exception of Hawaii, where the large military population has not taken to John Kerry, none of these states are prime contenders for a late night; all will favor Mr. Kerry. California may be closer than many expect--Mr. Kerry's lead in late polls is only seven points--and that will cheer Republicans, who will credit the improvement over Mr. Bush's 12-point loss in 2000 to the improved standing of the state party under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Their consumption of champagne should be limited, however. They failed to run a competitive Senate race against liberal Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer, pointing up the weakness of the GOP bench once it gets beyond former bodybuilders. In the Pacific Coast's only governor's race, in Washington, Republican state Sen. Dino Rossi has a one-point lead in polls over Democratic Attorney General Christine Gregoire. Should he win, Republicans will elect their first governor since 1980 and the first conservative governor since probably the 1920s. Washington also has two competitive House races for seats being vacated by GOP incumbents. Republicans Cathy McMorris and Dave Reichert are favored to fend off their Democratic opponents.

Democratic Sens. Daniel Inoyue (Hawaii), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Patty Murray (Wash.) should all win easily.

Midnight

Alaska 3 S
Alaska is heavily Republican, but appointed incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski has never shaken the stigma of being named to the seat by her father, who held her seat until two years ago, when he became governor. The nepotism charge has dogged here throughout her two-year tenure, despite a good record of defending the state's interests. Democrats have rallied the union and American Indian vote behind former Gov. Tony Knowles. Ms. Murkowski has not polled above 45% or 46% during the entire race, a serious sign of danger for any incumbent. Implausibly, it looks as if Alaska will have a Democratic senator, albeit one who will have a moderate record if he has any hope of winning re-election. And of course Mr. Bush will win easily.