Over the course of three debates incumbent president George Bush and presidential challenger Senator John Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) took advantage of an important opportunity to sway undecided American voters, clarify their own positions on important election-year issues and point out their opponent's weaknesses. But with all four debates behind us and just weeks before the presidential election itself, it's clear a substantial number of potential voters are still painfully undecided. In fact, the debates have done more to solidify the opinions of already-decided voters than sway that silent majority that still vacillates between both candidates. Why weren't the debates more persuasive? Blame the numbers.

In November 2004, my piece "the Numbers Game," a political analysis of the American presidential election in November 2004, was published in Il Talento, an Italian academic journal focusing on matters of international relations, politics, and economics. Read it on line and download a PDF copy of the article from that site.