“They know that Bush isn’t running, that John McCain is not Bush,” he said.
One key to winning the coming vote, as in past elections, will be to claim battleground states which are all but impossible to predict, because they are so narrowly divided.
Bush won the critically important state of Florida by some 500 votes against then-US vice president Al Gore in 2000.
McCain leads Obama according to polls in the state by about eight percentage points, thanks to Florida’s sizable population of veterans, Jews and elderly — groups where Obama has not been able to make sizable inroads so far.
Other key states like Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania remain undecided, despite what is perhaps a slight demographic edge for Democrats, but that could readily change, Sabato said.
“It might take a while — until after the conventions or until after the debates — but it’s going to happen,” he predicted.
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