Very encouraging electoral analysis here!

[lancdem]

http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/

In 2000, Gore lost the Gallup red states by 57-41, carried the Gallup blue states by 55-40 and the purple states (Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin) were a dead heat, at 48-48. Today, the Gallup data (using likely voters and throwing in Nader to make the comparison more exact) show Kerry also losing in the red states, though by less (51-45), running about the same as Gore in the blue states (55-42) and running way ahead of Gore in the purple states (52-39).

What this means is that Kerry's overall lead in the Gallup poll is in no way traceable to running up the vote in the blue states; he's simply holding the Gore lead in those states. Instead, Kerry's lead over Bush is driven by exactly what you'd want it driven by: strongly improved performance, relative to Gore, in swing states and whittling down Bush's lead in the red states.

In light of this analysis, it's interesting to look at a Barron's analysis by John Zogby of state-by-state polling (both his own and others) that shows Kerry holding 85 percent of the blue state (defined here in the traditional way as states Gore carried, no matter how small the margin) electoral votes plus New Hampshire, Bush holding only 63 percent of the red state electoral votes and 136 electoral votes "in play". The in play electoral votes, in Zogby's analysis, are distributed over 12 states (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin), 8 of which were carried by Bush in 2000 and only 4 by Gore, meaning the Republicans have much more turf to defend than the Democrats.

[yardwork]

1. The Repugs are on the wrong track.

They keep playing to their core constituency, but that's not where they'll lose the election.

[Sagan]

2. True, but they don't have any choice.

Their core constituency is restless. And the typical way to reach out to the middle of the electorate, entitlement programs, would only exacerbate the financial problems that are MAKING their core constituency restless.

It's a vicious cycle, I'm happy to say. :)

[DU9598]

3. Senate Races

We got a big help with the now competitive and maybe Democratic leaning Senate race in Colorado. It will be nice to see if AG Salazar has some coattails for Kerry in Colorado.

It makes me a bit nervous here in Iowa that we lost our opportunity for a real challenge to Sen. Grassley. Roxanne Conlin decided not to make a challenge - we still have a week to find a top tier candidate. Speculation is running toward Jerry Crawford (Kerry's Iowa man) and Secretary of State Chet Culver. While I think Iowa is safely D for Kerry, it would help to have a good Senate candidate to run up the score a bit.