Reply #10: I have always used the two-party vote for pre and post-election

[TruthIsAll]

analysis, except in the case of the NEP, which is broken down
into Kerry, Bush and Nader votes. 

Yes, I agree. To be mathematically pure, R+D+O=1. But it is
much cleaner to work with just two unknowns for calculation of
the MOE's and binomial  probabilities.

Kerry won 65% of former Nader 2000 voters and Bush 13%,
according to the NEP. But the third-party 1% vote (only 1
million+ votes) is  small potatoes when you consider that
there were  21 million new voters which Kerry won by a 3-2
margin.

I used a two-party analysis in an election model to forecast
the final vote based on state polls (using Monte Carlo
Electoral Vote simulation) and an average of 18 national polls
(for the popular vote) with an undecided vote allocation
factored in.

My final projection was Kerry 51.8%, Bush 48.2%. Since the
3rd-party vote was 1%, subtracting it equally from Bush and
Kerry the final result is: Kerry 51.3%, Bush 47.7%, Other 1%.