WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush will defeat his Democratic rival, John Kerry, in the November 2 election because he is leading in the polls in the key US swing states, the president's top political adviser said in an interview published Thursday.
Karl Rove, who has a Machiavellian reputation as a political mastermind, said in an interview with The Washington Times that many states "that were expected to be in close contention are floating out of contention" and into Bush's camp.
With the US electorate highly polarized and largely decided, there are only some 16 "battleground" states stretching from Oregon to Florida that are considered still up for grabs.
It takes 270 electoral votes of the 538 apportioned among the states and awarded in separate winner-take-all contests to win the election.
Rove told the newspaper that the swing states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia are already in the Bush camp. The Republicans must now hang on to Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio, four key states that he won in 2000.
Nationally, Bush leads Kerry by five or six points, Rove said, citing internal campaign polls.
However, he warned about the debates the candidates have scheduled.
Kerry "will be the best debater the president's ever faced," Rove told the Times. "We underestimate Kerry at our peril. He is very good at this; he's an aggressor. He goes in there flailing."
But Rove believes that the biggest problem the Democrats have "is not getting Kerry's people to dislike Bush; it's getting (them) to like Kerry."
"Hatred is a powerful emotion, but it is not a very durable emotion. You cannot maintain hatred in your heart for another person and keep it for a long period of time," Rove said.
The November election is shaping up to be just as close as the 2000 cliffhanger in which outgoing vice president Al Gore won the popular tally but lost to Bush by five electoral votes.