Pollster John Zogby recently predicted that the Presidential race is John Kerry's to lose.

Horace Cooper in the Washington Times disagrees, saying Kerry will come out of the convention "unlikely to win and possibly headed for a thumping in November."

Scott Rasmussen meanwhile argues that at worst the election has gone from Bush's to lose to a tossup.

What little movement we have seen suggests that the President loses a couple of points every time a new level of bad news comes from Iraq. After a few days or a week, however, the numbers return to the toss-up range. Senator Kerry loses a few points every time the spotlight focuses on him. Kerry's numbers bounce back when the focus returns to the President.

Also, a key part of the Zogby analysis is that "The President’s problem is further compounded by the fact that he is now at the mercy of situations that are out of his control." It's absolutely true that the economy and Iraq are out of the President's control. But, they are also out of Senator Kerry's control.

When all is said and done, it is the reality in Iraq and the economy will determine the election. If Iraq stabilizes in any way and the economy improves, the President will be hard to beat. If Iraq deteriorates significantly and the economy fails to improve, the Senator will have the edge.
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While the polls have shown an incredibly tight race for months, I don't believe it will be that close on Election Day in November. I'm not envisioning a landslide, but believe the most likely scenario is for one candidate or the other to win a modestly comfortable victory.

Why do I say this? Because events in Iraq and the economy will determine the outcome. Those situations will change for better or worse and voters will decide accordingly. If they go one direction, Bush wins. If they go the other way, Kerry wins.

--Rasmussen

Personally I side with Rasmussen here. Zogby seems to take for granted that the economy and Iraq will continue going badly through November. If both those things continue to get worse than sure it's John Kerry's to lose, but I certainly don't think you can go making that assumption at this point. It's a pretty big assumption, especially given the increase we've already seen in job creation and the fact that June 30 will be a turning point in Iraq. It's not inevitably a positive turning point, but it's certainly likely that events in Iraq will be different after that date than before. You can't be basing predictions on world events being exactly the same 6 months from now and expect to be right.