Can’t wait until polling day? Step this way to pull the handle

THE volume of early voting has taken all the parties by surprise.

Though only a limited number of early polling centres in some States have opened, they have been swamped by voters, with people sometimes queuing for four hours to “pull the handle” (they’ve had voting machines like slot machines over here for years).

Analysts estimate one fifth of all Americans will have voted before polling day. But the waverers, those who will decide the election, are more likely to be the last-minute merchants.

THE polls continue to contradict each other, and sometimes themselves.

There are a couple of intriguing things about US polls. They seem to involve smaller samples and have a wider margin of error than in Britain and Ireland.

Their methodology is also different. They phone the respondents rather than conducting face-to-face interviews. This, say some experts, leads to discrepancies. Poorer people and the young (who have mobiles) have fewer land lines.

The polls have got it spectacularly wrong before, most infamously in 2000 where exit polls called Florida as a clear Gore win.

THERE’S a presidential election campaign going on but it still only played second fiddle to another story. The Boston Red Sox won baseball’s World Series for the first time in 86 years, finally reversing the so-called Curse of the Bambino.

That happened in 1918 when the Red Sox sold the most famous player of all, Babe Ruth, to the Yankees. They never won another World Series after that.

Of course, John Kerry, a Bostonian, basked in the reflected glory. “There was a guy who called into a radio talk show last year,” he said. “He said John Kerry won’t be President until the Red sox win the World Series.”

CELEBRITY endorsement seems to involve a candidate dragging onto stage somebody who was big in the 1980s and 1990s but has more or less dropped off the radar since then.

Michael Stipe of REM and Bruce Springsteen have done a Billy Bragg for Kerry. Arnold Schwarzenegger was in Ohio yesterday with Bush, the two together making it an outright victory for brawn over brain.

Meanwhile, John Edwards was joined by John Bon Jovi in North Carolina. We were wondering where he had disappeared to. And hoping he’d stay there.

THE nightmare scenario after November 2 would be if both candidates finished equal, which is mathematically possible.

In that situation, Congress would decide. The House of Representatives (controlled by the Republicans) would choose the President and the Senate (which the Democrats may control) would elect the Veep.

That would give us George Bush as President and John Edwards as Vice President. Intriguing but not impossible.