I love you, Sweetheart!

I call on all Americans to view the transfer of Iraqi sovereignty with great national pride.  We are responsible for this triumph of freedom.  Under the unwaivering leadership of President Bush, we, as a nation, have reaped a great reward for the great sacrifice of our troops and civilians.  We now stand in the presence of a newborn nation we helped to create.  What a great day!

Update:  Everyone should check out this poll in the Washington Post.  It is very encouraging to me and should be to all who desire for good to come from our liberation of Iraq.  From the article:

68 percent of Iraqis have confidence in their new leaders. 73 percent of Iraqis polled approved of Allawi to lead the new government, 84 percent approved of President Ghazi Yawar almost two-thirds backed the new Cabinet Four out of every five Iraqis expected that the new government will "make things better" for Iraq after the handover two-thirds of Iraqis believed the first democratic elections for a new national assembly -- tentatively set for December or January -- will be free and fair

Hat tip to "election watcher", an anonymous contributor to this site's comment forums, for this information.

Now to the current numbers.  Bush has reclaimed Nevada, and its 5 electoral votes are responsible for Bush's 274-264 electoral vote edge.  The liberal Senator from Massachusetts maintains his popular vote lead by a shrinking 49.5% - 48.7% margin.  The President has improved his national numbers, but not yet enough for Florida to return to the GOP side of the ledger.  However, where national numbers fail, state polls do the trick.  As a result, Florida is the only state this week to flip sides due to state data.

I've added a new feature to the projection page this week.  You can now see all updates to the "State of the States" section.  If a state changes from dark red to red or from blue to light blue, it will be listed in this new section.

Since I began tracking these projections in August, 2003, the President's most impressive numbers have been 477 electoral votes and a 17.60% margin seen on the 12th of January, 2004.  His worst electoral vote total was 181 on September 5, 2003..  May 26, 2004 saw Mr Bush's worst percentage deficit so far.  That update projected him to lose by 7.6%.

State polls are contributing significantly to Bush's EV total.  Both Florida and Ohio are in his column due to those polls.  Only Nevada changes sides in Kerry's favor this week.  If you're rooting for the liberal Massachusetts Senator, you can take heart in the fact that Florida and Ohio are within a whisker of changing back to blue.  Bush leads in Ohio by only 0.19%, and, get this, he leads in Florida by 0.01%!!

Since I began tracking these projections in August, 2003, the President's most impressive numbers have been 477 electoral votes and a 17.60% margin seen on the 12th of January, 2004.  His worst electoral vote total was 181 on September 5, 2003..  May 26, 2004 saw Mr Bush's worst percentage deficit so far.  That update projected him to lose by 7.6%.

Of course, you may say, the Blogging Caesar controls this website and can simply refuse to update the numbers if Bush is projected to win less than 201 EVs.  This is true, yet I will commit to all of you that I will notify this audience if Edict #7 is broken at any time between now and November 2.

I would like for everyone who visits Election Projection to run on over to The Fourth Rail and read it carefully (the links included provide vital information, so be sure not to miss them). And to those of you who pride yourselves on "having an open mind," I'd encourage you to put your mind where your mouth is.  If a thorough reading of Drummond's piece doesn't at least give you cause to rethink Iraq, then you might as well stop considering yourself "open-minded."

American fatalities in Iraq have decreased; gas prices have come down, albeit slightly, as well. The economy is moving along nicely, and jobs are being created.  One would expect the President's numbers to have improved over the last two weeks, and one would be correct. Bush has closed the gap on Kerry, but not as much as I had hoped.  The current tally shows Kerry up by 94 electoral votes, 316-222, and by 5.1 percentage points, 51.6% - 46.5%.  That's a gain of 21 electoral votes for the President from the last update (he gains Arizona and Missouri this time around).  Missouri is the only state to flip based on state polls.  Without them, it would have remained blue.

I'll preview an upcoming edict The Blogging Caesar will soon issue and tell you that you shouldn't expect Bush's numbers to return to the depths of the previous projection.  Bush has hit bottom and is beginning what will be a long, steady rise to invulnerability, notwithstanding another news cycle like the recent prisoner abuse story.

Since I began tracking these projections in August, 2003, the President's most impressive numbers have been 477 electoral votes and a 17.60% margin seen on the 12th of January, 2004.  His worst electoral vote total was 181 on September 5, 2003..  The last update, on May 26, 2004, was Mr Bush's worst percentage deficit so far.  That update projected him to lose by 7.6%.

All told, the economy has added 1.2 million reported jobs in 5 months so far this year.  That's 240,000 per month.  Michael, who's out chasing the wind, makes a great observation. He quotes John Kerry's master plan for creating jobs, does some clever computing with very simple math, and concludes that a vote for Kerry is a vote to slow down current job growth. For a number cruncher like myself, that's the kind of illustrative calculating I love!

Update:  For some reason, Michael's site seems to have gone down very shortly after I posted this entry.  I'll go ahead and show you what he included there.  John Kerry claims on his website to have a plan to create 10 million jobs during his first term.  If you divide the 48 months that make up a four-year term into 10 million, the result is 208,333 per month.  That's 40,000 per month less than the economy has been creating since the first of this year.

Update:  Over the last two days, a lot of state polls have been released with some interesting numbers.  National polls are still scarce with only ARG publishing a new one.  I have taken a look at the state polls and determined that the electoral vote totals projected here would remain the same with those polls included.  So, I'm going to continue to wait for some more national polls to be released