Is Bush doing a Kinnock?

I already have my answer to Jimmy Young, when he quizzes me about the result of the presidential election just after noon on Wednesday. "Well, Andrew, why did Al Gore/George Bush [delete whichever is appropriate] win in the end?"

"Well, Jim," I'll reply, "once voters got inside the privacy of those polling booths, they decided that policy/character was the most important factor." The main choice facing voters on Tuesday is now clear: they vote for somebody demonstrably competent, but whom they dislike (Gore), or for the decidedly dodgier of the two candidates, whom they none the less consider the more likable character (Bush).

The media consensus is that Boy George now has it pretty sewn up, but I've warned before about the dangers of believing everything you read or hear about the US. The momentum has been going Dubbya's way ever since the nation decided Gore was a serial exaggerator and fibber, and the Bushie friend I quoted last week may well be right that this alone will be enough to propel Boy George into the White House next January.

A sign of Boy George's confidence was his foray to California last Tuesday. "There's going to be a lot of shocked people on 7 November, starting with my opponent and all the pundits who don't understand what is happening in California," he roared to cheering supporters.

Maybe. In the words of the presidential candidate Ralph Nader the day before: "Only Al Gore can beat Al Gore." There is now a palpable malaise and depression among many Democrats about the way Gore has conducted himself in this campaign. Boy George's visit to California, therefore, was either a pre-victory tour of the already anointed President Bush II - Dubbya would certainly like California's 54 electoral votes, but they are not as vital to him as others - or a sign of dangerous overconfidence (cf Kinnock in 1992?).

The Big Mo, as his dad likes to refer to electoral momentum, has been with Boy George, partly because of that peculiarly Reaganesque ability to which I first drew attention a fortnight ago; he has managed to inculcate in voters' minds an association between himself and the words "trust" and "leader", while Gore has been rabbiting on about silly things like, um, policies.

But while the world has been watching public opinion polls, the more shrewd analysts look at the way these translate into electoral college votes (538 in all, with 270 needed to win). Looked at this way, even a week before polling day, Bush's victory was by no means assured.

Unless Boy George's prediction in California last Tuesday comes true and there is a Bush landslide, Gore should still take the two most populous states in the US - New York (33 electoral college votes) and California (54). But the skewed way US elections and polls work means that, whoever is the ultimate victor, Boy George is almost certain to win more states: the deciding factor will be which states.

It is thus largely irrelevant what a voter in Alabama, Texas, or Wyoming, say, tells pollsters how he or she intends to vote; those states will go to Bush. The same goes for Connecticut, DC itself, or Massachusetts, for they comprise solid Gore country. Probably, in 2000, who will occupy the White House for the next four years depends on clumps of voters in Florida (25 electoral college votes), Pennsylvania (23), and Michigan (18). "Florida is the state to watch," agrees Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign manager.

This is why, on Wednesday, I could be telling Jimmy Young that President-elect Gore ran a brilliantly shrewd campaign after all. In one poll a week before election day, Gore was still ahead in Florida by 11 percentage points, by 3 points in Pennsylvania, and by 1 in Michigan; translated into electoral college votes, these results would mean that Gore would end up with 222 electoral college votes, Bush with 216, with 100 still up for grabs.

But another poll put Bush ahead of Gore in both Florida (4 percentage points) and Pennsylvania (2) - with Gore ahead by 4 percentage points in Michigan.

In other words, it is still all a lot more complicated than those polls and pundits are saying. In their we-are-now-assured-of-victory mode, the Bushies have set up no fewer than 250 field offices in California alone; in one single week, Bush has spent $1.8m in television advertising there.

Gore, by contrast, is concentrating on the unglamorous but crucial swing states: since June, his team has broadcast no fewer than 4,762 campaign ads in Philadelphia (the biggest city in Pennsylvania) against Bush's 2,898. In gritty electoral strategy, therefore, Gore could still be playing the cannier game.

If the vote was just among white men, Bush would be the landslide winner; Gore tends to dominate among unmarried voters, while married women are now divided equally. Dubbya leads among rural voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan, while the southern rural Democratic tradition is still just about holding for Gore in Florida.

Perhaps most revealing of all, though, is that in Florida and Pennsylvania, Gore is attracting only about 60 per cent of voters who otherwise pronounce themselves satisfied with the Clinton administration; in Michigan, the figure is around 65 per cent. For a vice-president who has helped preside over the strongest economy in history, this is bad news - and shows how voters are turning off Gore. Likewise, 11-12 per cent of registered Democrats in both Florida and Pennsylvania plan to vote for Bush - double the number of Republicans intending to support Gore.

Desperate to ram home once and for all the message that Gore is unreliable as well as a little potty, the Boy George team began to air a brand new ad last Tuesday evening:

"Remember when Al Gore said his mother-in-law's prescriptions cost more than his dog's?" a voice asked soothingly, with just the right contrived exasperation. "His own aides said the story was made up. Now, Al Gore is bending the truth again."

The voice went on to accuse Gore of misrepresenting Dubbya's plans for social security and ends with a video-clip of Gore: "There has never been a time when I said something untrue," he is seen saying. Then the screen faded and left viewers with that soothing, almost amused, voice: "Really?"

History shows that such attack ads usually work; the most infamous of all, featuring a black murderer named Willie Horton allowed out on parole by Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, probably won the 1988 election for George Bush I against his opponent, Dukakis. Yet, after partisan slanging during the Nineties, a new mood has swept the country: increasingly, voters want their candidates to appear gentlemanly towards each other. Just as Bush's romp through California smacks of the premature victory jubilation of Kinnock in 1992, so this is an attack ad that could yet rebound on Boy George.

For his part, Gore is remaining determinedly vice-presidential and above personal abuse. Instead, he is leaving that to his running-mate, Senator Joe Lieberman: "George Bush is not ready to be president," Lieberman said flatly in Wisconsin last Monday.

This is the question the Gore camp desperately wants American voters to be asking themselves when they go into the privacy of the polling booths on Tuesday: is Boy George man enough to be president?

Then there is this year's wild card, about whom you read here first, Ralph Nader.

"The polls have a margin of error of plus or minus one Ralph Nader," joked Jay Leno on his much-watched late-night show. I've said before that Nader could yet wreck California for Al Gore, and with it his presidential chances; he is, meanwhile, giving Gore nightmares in Oregon, traditional Democratic territory where Gore was forced to make an unplanned stop last Tuesday.

"I don't like the argument that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush [but] I think it's true," Gore said. "That is why Republicans are running advertisements for Nader," he added, referring to Bush's use of anti-Gore rhetoric from Nader in his ads.

My favourite cartoon of the campaign, meanwhile, shows Boy George coming out of the voting booths saying something like "They say that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush - so I voted for Nader." Pollster John Zogby says that Nader is taking 19 per cent of the hard-left vote from Gore, 11 per cent of independents, and 19 per cent of under-25s: "5 per cent [for Nader] is massive in a 1- or 2-point race," says Zogby. He predicts that Nader will cause "serious" damage to Gore.

Certainly those many disaffected Democrats who can't stand Gore are likely to turn to Nader, much as they did to Bill Bradley during the primaries.

There will thus be monumental efforts by the Gore team on Tuesday to increase voter turnout (it reached only a paltry 49.08 per cent in 1996), particularly among traditional black, Latino, labour activist, feminist and environmentalist bases of the Democratic grass roots.

Is the Big Mo irrevocably now with Boy George? Or is Slugger Al fighting a can-nier election than people realise? We can be confident of one thing only: that the unvarnished truth, heavy with prescient insights and hindsights, will be unveiled on the Jimmy Young show next Wednesday.