Reply #40: Good question!

[phrigndumass]

It appears they believe Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos is still active in certain parts of the country, well past the primaries. Rush's goal for Operation Chaos was to encourage republican voters to vote in the Democratic primaries instead, so they could "pick their opponent" ... they believed it would be much easier to defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election.

The increase in the number of Democratic primary voters has nothing to do with the party weighting system now. Party weighting comes from questions asked during current national polls, not from primary voter statistics.

However, it is possible that some republicans continue to answer "Democrat" or "Liberal" while participating in a national poll when asked which party they support or what their political views are. But in order for that to work, they would need to continue to do this on a massive scale. They're not nearly as organized as that would require!

I can see why the McCain campaign picked Pennsylvania to make their last stand ... the republican party in that state is well-organized, tried and tested, and Undecided percentages for Pennsylvania are still above the national average. They believe they have a chance to win over almost all the Undecided voters and go negative enough to win 1% or 2% of Obama supporters as well. They'll be reminding voters of what Obama said in the primary regarding "Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion to cope" and use that as a wedge issue, with both McCain and Palin on the ground there.

Will it work? We'll have to wait and see. My guess is that it won't, or it won't work enough.

:hi: