From the NewsMax.com Staff

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Sabato: Bush's Battleground Numbers 'Worrisome'

President Bush is in trouble, and so is Sen. John Kerry, according to Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

As for the president, "It must be worrisome to his campaign that he is currently lacking a 3 percent to 5 percent polling advantage in many essential battleground states," Sabato writes in the latest issue of his influential Crystal Ball e-newsletter.

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"Bush may well need this beyond-the-margin-of-error buffer to overcome the torrid Democratic antipathy to the president that could easily produce a larger-than-expected Democratic turnout on Election Day. And let's not forget the Crystal Ball's assessment that the remaining, hard undecided voters – perhaps 4 percent to 5 percent of the electorate – are still inclined to break against Bush, possibly by a sizeable margin."

He doesn't even mention all the Democrat vote fraud and sleaze already going on nationwide that Bush must overcome. The donkeys steal several percentage points in any election, David Horowitz once noted in an interview with NewsMax.

Sabato writes: "At the same time, John Kerry is also in the danger zone, having not solidified parts of the Democratic base and even some Democratic-leaning states a mere week before the election. Given Bush's substantial burdens as the incumbent – a contentious war, a mediocre economy, and all the rest – it is an unflattering commentary about Kerry the campaigner that he has not led Bush fairly consistently ... ."

As of now, Sabato shows Bush with 276 electoral votes and Kerry with 262. Bush is ahead in all the states he won in 2000 except Ohio and New Hampshire, but to make up for them leads in the former Gore states of Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico.

Editor's note: