Harry’s just wild about Kerry

If George W. Bush and John Kerry are looking for a usually reliable forecast of the poll outcome, they need look no further than the figures...

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If George W. Bush and John Kerry are looking for a usually reliable forecast of the poll outcome, they need look no further than the figures written on the mirror behind the bar at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. It’s not good news for Bush. A straw poll of Americans who drop in for a drink in the bar once frequented by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald puts his Democratic challenger far ahead, on 345 votes to Bush’s 233.

At first glance, an informal vote that has no impact on the outcome of Tuesday’s election should not worry Bush. But Harry’s says it has predicted the outcome of every presidential race correctly since 1924, with the exception of Jimmy Carter’s defeat of Gerald Ford in 1976.

The straw poll began at what is possibly Americans’ most famous overseas watering hole in 1924, when US citizens did not have absentee ballots.Voters this year have been casting yellow ballot papers in the big wooden box by the bar’s entrance since October 2. Voters have to be American and show their passport to prove it.

Congratulations Bush z A Sri Lankan businessman is so confident President Bush will be re-elected that he took out full page ads in all the island’s leading newspapers on Monday to congratulate him before time. “I love him… I think he is doing well. I think he is a great President,” said A.S.P. Liyanage who has never set foot in the United States. Liyanage spent one million Lankan rupees ($9,600) on the advertisements. Reuters