Why the polling disparity?

Many have wondered how the polls could be so disparate. After the Republican convention, Gallup and a few other polls had Bush up by 13 points, while others saw a much, much tighter race. I would like to offer a modest suggestion as to why.

Rigged polling.

And why rig the polls? Because Republican schemers wanted to have the option of rigging the vote.

You cannot have an electronically "enhanced" vote without first preparing the ground with skewed polls -- otherwise, election after election will feature results at a variance from expert forecasts, and even the dullest of our dullards will eventually become suspicious. The GOP thus needs to precede a fixed vote with rightward-skewing results from at least one major organization.

Obviously, manipulating all polling organizations is impossible -- and unnecessary. After the election shows a big Bush win, the pollsters who had forecast a massive GOP lead will seem more careful and scientific, while internet rumor campaigns will try to convince us that those who reported a tighter race allowed a liberal bias to skew their readings.

The other major reason for rigging poll results, of course, is the belief that voters like a winner.

A friend privately castigated me for adding to Bush's aura of invulnerability by forecasting a Kerry defeat. If this site reached a larger audience I may have watched my words more carefully, but a limited readership allows one to speak one's mind without any anxiety over tactics. Besides, I never pretended to be a positive thinker. To me, the glass is not only half-empty, someone probably poisoned the water.

The actual voting will begin quite soon -- absentee ballots will fall into mailboxes within days. It's too late, baby: Kerry has lost. The struggle now is to keep the loss from being too humiliating. He is making a pathetic effort to shore up his base, having lost many college-educated women.

His only hope of winning rests with the possibility of a major Bush screw-up -- although the Rovian spinsters are so talented, I wonder if even a Gerry Ford moment (anyone else recall how he "freed" communist Poland?) would cause much voter defection.

Even if the Swift Boat lies and other fabrications had not defeated Kerry, Diebold would have carried the day for Bush. Hence the need, as noted earlier, for ground preparation.