National polls in mid-August 2004 placed the Bush-Kerry contest in a virtual tie, with a Pew Research survey giving Democrat John Kerry a 47-to-45 percent edge and a simultaneous Gallup poll showing President George W. Bush ahead 48 to 47. Both margins fell within the statistical margin of error.
State-level polling told a different story. Kerry held leads in 10 of 16 contested battleground states worth 119 electoral votes combined, while Bush led in one state with six electoral votes and five states totaling 52 remained too close to call. Adding those figures to states considered settled for each party projected a Kerry advantage of roughly 291 to 195 in the electoral vote count, well above the 270 needed to win.
Both campaigns concentrated their schedules and advertising spending in the 16 swing states, which stretched from Oregon to Florida and collectively held 177 electoral votes. Seven of the eight states on Bush's previous week's tour were battlegrounds; Kerry's road trip hit 13 of the 16.
Razor-thin 2000 margins haunted the map. Oregon, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, and Florida had each been decided by fewer than 7,000 votes four years earlier. Al Gore had won the national popular vote by more than 500,000 ballots yet lost the presidency after the Florida recount, a precedent neither campaign could afford to ignore.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in August 2004, in its own words.