Kerry's blue blood a winner

When it comes to American presidential elections, blue blood counts.

So say British researchers who predict Democratic challenger John Kerry will oust President George W. Bush on November 2 simply because he boasts more royal connections than his Republican rival.

After months of research into Mr Kerry's ancestry, Burke's Peerage, experts on British aristocracy, reported yesterday that the Vietnam war veteran is related to all the royal houses of Europe and can claim kinship with Tsar Ivan "The Terrible", a previous Emperor of Byzantium and the Shahs of Persia.

Burke's director Harold Brooks-Baker said Mr Kerry had his mother, Rosemary Forbes, to thank for most of his royal connections.

"Every maternal blood line of Kerry makes him more royal than any previous American president," Mr Brooks-Baker said.

"Because of the fact that every presidential candidate with the most royal genes and chromosomes has always won the November presidential election, the coming election - based on 42 previous presidents - will go to John Kerry."

Similar research carried out on Mr Bush ahead of the 2000 presidential race showed that he beat Al Gore in the royal stakes, claiming kinship with Britain's Queen Elizabeth as well as with Kings Henry III and Charles II of England.

Mr Kerry is a descendant of the former Kings of England, Henry III and Henry II and is distantly related to Richard the Lionheart, who led the third Crusade in 1189, according to Burke's.

He is also descended from Henry I, King of France and his wife, Anne of Kiev, giving him kinship with the royal houses of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the House of Rus.