Reply #20: Yeah

[DemocratSinceBirth]

By the time the conventions are finished you have a pretty good idea of how the election will turn out...In fact you can get a pretty good picture in the year or so before...In 00 it was a pickem and in 04 Bush* was a small favorite...

The 88 election was odd... I never thought the Duke's seventeen point lead was real...It might have been an artifact of polling... Anyway a seventeen point lead turned into a eight point defecit, a swing of twenty five points... The swing in 76 was actually larger... Jimmy Carter saw a 33% post convention lead shrink to a <2% lead on election day... In fact, if not for 30,000 votes in Hawaii and Ohio he loses...

I look at history, polls, and the structure of this race (now) and it seems a Democratic victory is more likely than not...