Literary Digest Revisited: It turns out the polls showing Bush with a significant lead over Kerry overweight Republicans in their sample by a significant margin. Registered Democrats narrowly outnumber Republicans by about three points, but the Gallup and NY Times pollsters are interviewing more Republicans, giving them a margin of between 4-7 points. In fact, the NY Times poll not only shows Bush with an eight-point lead, but does so from a sampling base that preferred Bush to Gore four years ago by the same margin, varying ever so slightly from the actual result, which saw Gore winning by a point. If you factor in the party bias in those polls, the race is suddenly dead even.

In fact, I would predict that if the hardworking people at Gallup were to arbitrarily oversample Democrats, lets say by between 10-15 percentage points, their results would show a dramatic shift by the voters, and Kerry would suddenly have a double-digit lead. The Chattering Class would suddenly be talking about how Kerry's staff shakeup has led to a resurgent campaign, while the continuing controversy about his National Guard service has put the President into freefall. On the other hand, they could simply interview only Republicans, and probably reveal a massive surge in support for the President, and a likely historic loss for the Democrats.