LEWISTON – It’s John Kerry’s race to lose.

That’s the prediction of campaign expert Thomas Mann, who addressed the Great Falls Forum Monday at Bates College.

“John Kerry clearly has the advantage going into the election,” said Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Undecided voters will likely fall his way, Mann said. Meanwhile, the struggling economy and the ongoing occupation of Iraq have put people in the mood for change, he said.

That’s not to say it’s all wrapped up. Current polls contradict each other, naming both President Bush and Kerry as winners if the election were held today.

“Don’t make much of them at all,” said Mann.

Most polls are conducted by telephone and 90 percent of people hang up on the questioners, he said. They also try to interview likely voters, an identification that’s exceedingly tough to be certain of, he said.

“It’s very hard to know who will vote,” he said. It’s a population that is constantly changing and is exceptionally tough to define at a time when mass voter registrations are under way.

Such are the vagaries that motivate political scientists.

Mann, 60, has taught at several universities, including Princeton, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown.

He has worked for the nonpartisan Brookings Institution since 1987, serving 12 years as its director of governmental studies. He is also widely published, writing about elections, polls and campaign finance.

Mann said he has been intrigued by this election, coming at a time when the Democrats and Republicans have achieved a “rough parity.”

Neither party seems to dominate, he said. Meanwhile, people appear to be more strictly partisan than they have been in years.

However, the general trend for electing a president should remain constant, he said.

“It’s about assessing the current team’s performance and deciding whether to hire them for another four years,” Mann said.

If there were no war, Bush would win by a landslide, he said.

But the occupation of Iraq – the deaths, the uncertainty and its effect on oil prices – has weighed on Bush’s re-election hopes.

“There is a substantial market for change,” Mann said.

Even so, Bush seemed to be walking away with the race for a while.

In the weeks that followed the Republican National Convention, talk of flip-flops and swift boats stuck to Kerry and dominated the national discussion.

“The election was turning into a referendum on John Kerry instead of the country,” Mann said.

That began to change when Kerry started firing back at Bush on the war in Iraq.

“He learned something from Bush,” Mann said. “You don’t attack your opponents’ weaknesses. You attack their strengths.”

The debates also changed the persona, reshaping Kerry into someone who could be “a perfectly plausible occupant of the White House,” he said.

It all gives Kerry the edge.

In past races, undecided voters have either stayed home or gone disproportionately to the challenger.

There may still be an October surprise. Pundits have argued that a terrorist strike, the arrest of Osama bin Laden or some other event could throw predictions into a tailspin.

“The thing about October surprises is that you can’t predict them,” Mann said.