So, here is my own prognostication for the election, dispatched from the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, where I’ve come to help run a staging location for get-out-the-vote operations in this swing region (as the saying goes here, “as Lehigh Valley goes so goes Pennsylvania”). Kerry will win and, being the contrarian I am (and going far out on a limb) I don’t think the Electoral College will be that close, despite the hand-wringing scenarios of a tie or no clear winner on the morning of November 3rd.

Some states may have close votes (so, no one should stop for a moment from their election-related work) but I think the margins in states like Florida, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin will be wider than the razor-thin 2000 margins. I’m basing this largely on the predicted huge turn-out of voters, which typically favors Democrats, and those first-time voters who are going to show up in significant numbers. If voter turn-out is low, my predictions are null and void.

Of the so-called battleground states, Kerry will win Oregon, Washington, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Iowa, New Mexico and Minnesota; I also think that Kerry will pull off a surprise in Nevada where the early-voting has already given Kerry a 7,500 vote lead, according to very good sources. Bush will win Colorado, Arizona, and West Virginia I also don’t buy the media hype about a few states that, by some accounts, have come into play. Kerry will win New Jersey and Hawaii (though some union strategists I know are nervous about Hawaii because the Catholic church is working hard for Bush) and Bush will win Virginia and Arkansas.

Three possible pro-Kerry surprises loom if GOTV operations are super-human: Colorado, where a huge chunk of independents (more than one million, a third of all registered voters) could negate a Republican edge over Democrats in registration, and Arkansas and West Virginia might tip his way, the latter if there is a huge pro-Kerry union vote (for my money, Kerry should have been out toting a shotgun and dripping goose blood in West Virginia three months ago). Bush could claim Iowa and New Mexico.

But, that won’t matter because¦ I think Kerry wins the big three: Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, totaling 68 EVs, largely because of a large turn-out of Democratic voters, particularly newly registered voters: Ohio voters are not going to look past the job numbers in the state; Pennsylvania will have a huge Philadelphia turn-out; and the early-voting in Florida, which has favored the Democrats, will pre-sage a tsunami-like Election Day stampede to the polls, pushing the entire Florida turn-out to 70 percent.

Total: Kerry 316, Bush 222.

And that margin could even be bigger.

I get to the number considering a variety of factors but here are three that feel persuasive:

Right Track/Wrong Track: while gyrating *horse race* numbers have been suspect this year for all the reasons bandied about (pollsters not capturing cell phone users, polling models not taking into account large numbers of newly registered voters and increasing numbers of people not cooperating with pollsters), the numbers examining how people feel about the direction of the country have been pretty consistent: since Labor Day (actually, this trend stretches back long before) a majority of voters, usually by double-digit margins, have said they feel the country is on the wrong track (most recent poll: 53 to 41 said country was on the wrong track). It’s the key number that has driven Bush’s campaign speech rhetoric of “things are getting better,” whether he’s riffing on Iraq or unemployment. Swing voters and the first-time voters, particularly in the battleground states, will hold the incumbent responsible. This number is more significant than the “who would you vote for?” question, a question, by the way, on which Bush has regularly scored below 50 percent.

The Imus/Stern/HipHop factor: Don Imus and Howard Stern have been pounding Bush for months (though Stern is in transition to a new show on satellite radio). They have millions of listeners. I’ve seen very little recent reporting in the mainstream national press about the Russell Simmons-driven registration and get-out-the-vote operation among the Hip-Hop community, which has been going on long before (http://www.hiphopsummitactionnetwork.org/Content/Main.aspx?pageId=1) the primaries even started (check out ). Taken together, I think the Imus/Stern HipHop factor alone will turn out a large number of voters who are not being picked up by the polls–and they will vote overwhelmingly against the incumbent.

The Draft: No matter how many times Bush said he wouldn’t institute a draft to support the Iraq war, I’m sure every voter between 18-25 heard only one word: draft. Expect a fair number of young voters to vote for Kerry, mimicking the impulses Bush, Cheney and other top Republicans had during the Vietnam War: hell, no, I don’t wanna go. (on the subject of Republican Chicken Hawks, see here.)

If you choose, you can add this to the mix, too. A very reliable source passed on information just yesterday from Mark Mehlman, senior strategist for Bush, who spoke candidly with another political insider (this arrives to me with five degrees of separation): Mehlman described the Bush team in “major melt down” because their polling has them losing in Ohio and Florida. They simply don’t have the numbers to win in Florida, and do not have the operation to counter the massive number of early voters and are having real trouble maintaining the base in Florida and elsewhere (“our people are just turning away”). In Ohio, they’ve been simply overwhelmed with the new voter registrations and have been unsuccessful in court challenges. Bush’s numbers actually go down now when he visits Ohio after Treasury Secretary Snow’s comments in the state that job losses were a “myth.” They are madly dashing to pull something out in the Upper Midwest; Michigan isn’t really in play, it’s a head fake. Wisconsin is slipping away: Bush spoke in Green Bay to less than 5,000 people (Kerry drew 80,000 in Madison on Thursday). Iowa may have had some potential but the Democrats did a huge absentee ballot push, so Iowa is unlikely. They can’t win with Minnesota alone and even that state doesn’t look good.

Mehlman said, according to this source, that there is incredible discord at the top, with Cheney livid, believing Bush looked like a “goddamn mental patient” during the debates, losing the election before 65 million people. I pass it on, for what it’s worth–worthless, speculative rumor or actual reactions from a campaign in trouble.

And if none of that is convincing, here’s a really solid argument: in the last 7 decades, the incumbent president loses when the Washington Redskins lose their final home game before the election. Sunday’s score: Green Bay 28, Washington 14. It’s in the bag.

Finally, I’ll throw in a guess on the Congressional campaigns. This is not a hard one: The Democrats will not take back the House. Democrats have a shot at taking out some Republican incumbents (Chris Shays in Connecticut and Heather Wilson in New Mexico, for example) but, on this, I buy the conventional wisdom that there is no wind at the back of the House Democrats.

The Senate will end up with a 52-48 Republican majority. This presumes the Democrats will win previous Republican-held seats in Illinois (a lock), Colorado, Alaska, as well as hold on to Louisiana (which will be decided in an almost certain December run-off) and Florida, which may be the only Senate race to benefit from Kerry coattails.

Democrats are counting on a host of ticket-splitters in states where Bush will cruise but I just don’t see it: Republicans will pick up previous Democratic-held seats in Georgia (a lock), South Carolina and North Carolina (Democrat Erskine Bowles might edge by but I don’t see it), as well as hold on to Oklahoma (Bush’s 30-plus point lead in the polls offsets the off-the-wall comments of the Republican candidate, Rep. Tom Coburn, though there seems to be a big undecided bloc). My hunch is that Tom Daschle will lose his re-election fight in South Dakota.

But, watch Kentucky: this could be the upset of the night. The race between the Republican incumbent Jim Bunning and his Democratic challenger Dan Mongiardo has tightened considerably, though Bush has a huge double-digit lead and I still find it unlikely that enough voters will split their tickets and boot Bunning. While I’m counting it Republican, if Mongiardo wins and Daschle hangs on, the Senate will be tied 50-50 and Vice-President John Edwards will have a busy life in the Senate chair for at least the next two years (unless Dems can persuade Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who says he won’t vote for Bush, to switch parties).

In any case, one thing is clear: progressives still have a long fight ahead no matter how the election turns out.