As for the Arab-American audience at the Improv Comedy Club, there were definite signs of a very different mood going into this 2004 contest, compared with four years ago.
In a recent Quinnipiac poll, 41percentt of voters said taxes were the main issue in this year's gubernatorial contest, compared with 17percentt who cited economic factors and just 4percentt who registered concern about the state's rampant corruption.
In one closely watched if imprecise measure of the overall partisan strength of the two parties, 47 percent of likely voters said they would vote for a Republican in next week's Congressional contest, compared with 40percentt who said they would vote Democratic.
In the black precincts of Miami, 10% of the ballots did not count in the presidential contest, compared with 3% in whiter precincts of the city.Whatever the reasons for these lopsided results, they have fostered disenchantment among black voters and an upsurge of support for civil-rights leaders.
A poll of 859 registered voters age 18 and over, by the French polling group C.S.A., suggested that Mr. Hollande, 57, would capture 62 percent of the vote in a two-way contest, compared with 38 percent for Mr. Sarkozy, were the election held when the poll was taken, on Oct. 17.
The June presidential election pitting the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, against Mohammad Khatami (a former president who once spoke in a synagogue) will be a genuine contest as compared with the charades that pass for elections in many Arab states.
Although Mr. Dafoe's Martin is a credible frontiersman, the hunter-prey contest is insignificant compared with the film's allegorical contemplation of opposing forces: the promises and illusions of technology, survival versus conservation, the meaning of extinction in the age of cloning and, ultimately, the mystery of the past versus the uncertainty of the future.
"It's no contest," he said, when compared with "e-tailers who go out and buy ads on the Super Bowl".
Economically, it's no contest at the pump compared with gasoline because natural gas, whose main component is methane, is so abundant and cheap in Russia.
At the same time, Russia also has sought to deny Nabucco vital gas supplies in Asia and woo away its customer base in the West, in a contest that has been compared with the intricacies of a chess game.
