BURKES PEERAGE PREDICTED BUSH WOULD WIN

Of Human Interest: The lighter side of Election Day news

By PENNY NELSON, United Press International

BLUE BLOODS

Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush apparently has bluer blood than his Democratic rival, Vice President Al Gore.

And that, the folks at Burke's Peerage tell London's Guardian newspaper, is why Bush probably will win Tuesday. Harold Brooks-Baker, publishing director of the peerage ancestry publishing company, said the U.S. presidential candidate with the most aristocratic ancestry generally emerges as the winner.

According to Burke's Peerage research, Bush has twice as many ties with Aristocrats than Gore. The Texas governor is the candidate most directly descended from Norman warrior William the Conqueror and from Henry II and Charles II.

Bush reportedly does even better than his father, former President George Bush, because the GOP nominee's mother, Barbara Pierce Bush, has many royal ancestors - including the French Bourbons and "several Scandinavian monarchs, as well as members of the Russian, Spanish and German monarchies."

The less royally descended Gore apparently has what Burke's Peerage disdainfully calls "a few b-list central European royals including three German dukes and two Holy Roman Emperors from the Middle Ages."

Burke's has been charting aristocracy lineage since 1826. It claims that, based on ancestry, it has accurately forecast the outcome of the presidential race for almost 200 years.