A helpful site to bookmark in the next few days is the Wall St. Journal's Electoral College Calculator. You can play with the possible electoral scenarios.
Two sites that have been tracking the polls and their electoral implications are ElectionProjection.com and Electoral-Vote.com. The former is run by a strong Bush supporter; the latter by a strong Kerry supporter. They have different methodologies (both of which are explained on their site). Electoral-Vote.com uses a very simple formula for tabulating his predictions; ElectionProjection.com uses a more complicated formula that incorporates a number of different factors. (For details, see here.)
The best advice on poll-watching is not to pay too much attention to the daily fluctuations, but to consider the averages and the trends. The best place to do that is at RealClearPolitics.com. The RCP combined average poll has Bush up by 2.6 at the time of this writing.
The candidates, of course, don't just rely on the public polls. They have internal polls that help them determine the battleground state visits in these final few days. ABC News' The Note has the candidates schedules. Of interest: Cheney will soon be visiting Hawaii, which has been a liberal stronghold for the past 20 years. Bush now leads Kerry by less than 1 percent. Further, Kerry is visiting a number of states that Gore won in 2000, but which are no longer considered safe.
One interesting question in these final days is whether the new Osama bin Laden tape (partial WaPo transcript here) will help Bush or Kerry. I strongly suspect it will help Bush. In fact, I think it could make the election result much closer than conventional wisdom is now suggesting. (Cf. N.Z. Bear's opinion that "Osama bin Laden probably just gave the election to Bush.) Some think the tape will favor Kerry, since it reminds us that OBL is still uncaptured. That's plausible. But consider these factors:
(1) It reminds us of 9/11--one of America's darkest hours and one of Bush's finest.
(2) It highlights terrorism, which the polls show that Bush leads Kerry on this issue at an astonishing spread of 61 to 28.
(3) It seems pretty clear that OBL wants Bush to lose. Many will reason: if OBL is against a victory for W., I'm for it!
(4) It echoes the Democratic talking points. OBL blames the Patriot Act for undermining freedom, and mocks Bush for reading "My Pet Goat" will the Towers were being hit. (Gee, do you think OBL has been listening to Michael Moore?)
(5) It is freshly anti-Israel, which could help the U.S. Jewish vote.
We shall see....
