alternatehistory.com

I'm thinking of a timeline where either Kerry does better in the campaign, Bush does worse, or a combo of both, so that Kerry and the Democrats get a 1.30% increase in the vote, while Bush and the Republicans get a 1.30% decrease in the vote. Kerry wins the popular vote 60,628,444 to 60,440,610 (187,834 vote difference) with a percentage of 49.6% to 49.4%.

This switch of 1.30% from Bush to Kerry is somewhat uniform nationwide, but it's slightly lower in Ohio and slightly more in Nevada due to different allocation of resources and time in those states. This way Kerry wins Iowa, New Mexico, and Nevada, and makes Ohio incredibly close. In this TL Ohio is similar to Florida 2000 with Bush winning with a margin of somewhere between several hundred to a few thousand votes. Something really close that will lead to a contentious recount. Now with the flipping of those three states, we end up with a 269-269 tie (no faithless elector) which throws the election to the House.

With the 1.30% vote shift, Baron Hill (D) of Indiana 9 keeps his seat, and Lois Murphy (D) defeats Jim Gerlach (R) in Pennsylvania 6. So the House ends up 230 R to 205 D (counting Independent Bernie Sanders as caucusing with the Democrats). The state break down in the House is 30 majority Republican, 17 majority Democrat, and 3 ties. So Bush wins if the election ends up in the House.

With the same 1.30% vote shift in the Senate, Betty Castor (D) defeats Mel Martinez (R) in Florida, Daniel Mongiardo (D) defeats Jim Bunning (R) in Kentucky, David Vitter (R) fails to get a majority in Louisiana and I have him losing to Chris John (D) in the run off, and finally Tom Daschle (D) defeats John Thune (R) in South Dakota. Tom Daschle remains minority leader of the Democrats in the Senate, that is now 51 R to 48 D, with Jim Jeffords of Vermont as an Independent.

So Bush gets his second term and the Republicans still maintain control of Congress, only with a smaller margin, and we get all the butterflies that come with that. But how do we get there? What's a good enough POD, preferably during the campaign in 2004, to make this happen?
Top