OK, with a little time here and a bee in my bonnet, I decided to do an electoral map analysis using the 48% rule. That rule states that because an incumbent President is so well known, he's highly unlikely to get much of a late break on election day. So, if he's at 48% or lower, he's in trouble. So, I took that rule and applied it where it really matters: to the electoral college. Here's what I got:
Basically, what I did was look at all the recent polls from
2.004k.com, gave the ones where Bush was under 48% to Kerry, weighted any at 48% by the 2000 result, and gave the rest to Bush. This is not exactly scientific (you shouldn't compare across polls, using the last poll doesn't give the proper weight to trends, some polls push leaners while others don't, blah, blah), but I think it's at least as valid as a Gallup Likely Voter screen a month before an election. And maybe more so. So, here's the result.
Kerry grabs all of the Gore states. Bush is not at 48% in any of them. That's 260 EVs. In addition, he gets:
AR (Bush at 46% in Zogby)
CO (Bush at 47% in Public Opinion)
FL (Bush at 44% in Insider Advantage)
NH (Bush at 45% in Research 2000)
That makes a total of 308. And that doesn't include OH, with Rasmussen's 49% for Bush being the highest I've seen from there in quite a while.
Now, based on subjective analysis and looking at the ad buys, I'd guess AR won't go blue, OH is certainly in play and is slightly more likely for Kerry than Bush, while I'll go with the 48% rule in NH, FL, CO, and the Gore states (WI, NM, etc).
In addition, surprisingly, VA and MO have Bush at 49%, just above the threshold. These states seem close to battleground status, but it seems like they are moving in opposite directions (MO away from Dems, VA toward). Next cycle, they may have continued that with VA being a true battleground, and MO being a red state.
Possible differences this cycle: high Democratic turnout making these polls suspect, incredible negative GOP campaign turning off swing voters from voting, voter shenanigans . . . the list is long. But, I'd rather be in Kerry's position today than Bush's.