I can’t shake the feeling that one of the reasons Bush might be underpolling is that he’s underpolling. Besides from all the technical stuff, I suspect that a small fraction of Americans might be embarrassed to admit that they’re voting for Bush. All of Hollywood and elite media say you’re a fool or a fascist to vote for Bush. Isn’t it possible that a handful of Americans don’t want to tell a stranger that they’re voting for the candidate all the sophisticates call a cowboy-dunce-warmonger? Again, I don’t think it’s a huge number of people, but if it’s one or two or three people out of a hundred, that’s pretty significant given the landscape.

Similarly, as we discussed yesterday with the black vote, I think a lot of Democratic constituencies may be telling pollsters they’re more enthusiastic about voting for Kerry than they really are. A few anecdotal things I’ve seen in the last month at various colleges as well as conversations in airports and the like makes me feel like a lot of these newly registered Dems may never show up at the polls (much like Dean’s tsunami of young warriors never made the showing everyone promised) and if they do maybe a few more than expected will vote for Bush, or Nader.

For example, yesterday I was at the vet (Cosmo had a very worrisome leg injury yesterday, but he seems to be okay. More on that to come). While I was waiting for them to give my dog the all-clear I listened to a bunch of the techs and orderlies talk about the election. These were all obvious liberal urbanite types. They clearly didn’t want Bush to win but only one of them was definitely going to vote at all. That alone is a pretty thin reed to hang ones hopes for Western civilization upon, but it’s a start.