Word: likelihood
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...Palestinian legislative and presidential elections in eight years. Following the PA constitution, the speaker of the legislature, Rawhi Fattuh - a marginal figure with no independent power base - will act as president for 60 days, until elections can be held. The strongest candidate in such an election will, in all likelihood, be the nominee of Fatah, which remains the largest single faction. (Hamas is expected to participate in municipal elections and possibly even run for the Palestinian legislature which it previously boycotted, but it is unlikely to field its own presidential candidate...
...Even with the popular mandate of an election, the all-important backing of Fatah and diplomatic support from Washington, Abbas and Quereia would in all likelihood provide transitional leadership to the Palestinian national movement. Both men are in their 70s and not in the best of health, and the divergent interest groups in the West Bank and Gaza may limit their ability to cut deals. If anything, their tenure would hold the ring for various younger contenders to stake their own claims. Men such as Gaza security chieftain Mohammed Dahlan and his former West Bank counterpart Jibril Rajoub may have...
...pollsters decide who is a "likely voter"? This is tricky. Pollsters assign each surveyed voter a score based on the answers to multiple questions (such as "Did you vote in the last election?") that indicate the likelihood that he or she will vote. The highest-scoring voters are deemed "likely." How high a score produces a "likely"? It depends. Pollsters first estimate what the turnout will be on Election Day and then designate the same percentage of their respondents--again, based on highest scores--as "likely." Assumptions of who will vote thus have an enormous impact on poll results (especially...
...last week the Republicans were all but declaring that your children will die a gruesome death if John Kerry wins, and Kerry was warning that if you catch the flu, it's because George W. Bush screwed up your shot. Vice President Dick Cheney talked about the greater likelihood of a mushroom cloud over a U.S. city if Kerry is elected, inspiring the Boston Herald headline VOTE KERRY, GET NUKED, VEEP WARNS. Cheney's rival, John Edwards--who had suggested that among the stakes in this race was whether the lame would walk again--offered an alternative nightmare...
...Baran, an election lawyer and former general counsel to the Republican National Committee, takes a more sanguine view. "Based on more than 200 years of history, the likelihood of a disputed result is 1 in 25," he says. Presidential elections are usually not that close, he notes, and even in states where the outcome is razor-thin, changing the result there may not alter the outcome of the overall election. Baran posits that this election has less potential for mayhem than we're expecting. "With all these lawyers and all this public attention and Florida fresh in their minds, everyone...