Bush +15 in South Carolina

[Sam Spade]

My *guess* for SC (at the moment and presuming that Edwards isn't Kerry's VP pick. If he is the Dems gain in rural SC) is about 52% for Bush and 45% for Kerry.

Off just a bit, eh?

Just a bit indeed considering where the polls were in early July 2004.  If the election had been held then instead of November, Kerry would have won.  Unfortunately for Kerry he had the double debacle of a bad Democratic convention and a good GOP convention.  Had the Democrats been able to hold a decent convention,  Kerry might have won and had the Dems could have had a Senate that was unchanged or even ganed a seat had Vitter lost the runoff in Louisiana.  (Yes I know there was no runoff in the 2004 LA Senate race, but that was just barely and a better Democratic campaign across the board would have.  Also the Dems instead of losing 3 House seats would have picked up 2 or 3 seats depending on whether Colorado requires a plurality or a majority in US House elections.  (With a stronger Dem showing Musgrave would have only gotten a plurality in Colorado 4 instead of the majority she did in real life and Matsunaka would certainly have picked up most of the 4% of the vote for Green Party in the runoff.

That's a lot of ifs.