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Barack Obama and congressional Democrats won big on Tuesday night, but they should not mistake their victory for a big-government mandate. The evidence tells a very different story. A poll commissioned by the Club for Growth in 12 swing congressional districts over the past weekend shows that the voters who made the difference in this election still prefer less government -- lower taxes, less spending and less regulation -- to Sen. Obama's economic liberalism. Turns out, Americans didn't vote for Mr. Obama and Democratic congressional candidates because they support their redistributionist agenda, but because they are fed up with the...

Day 21: IBD/TIPP Tracking Poll The race tightened again Sunday as independents who'd been leaning to Obama shifted to McCain to leave that key group a toss-up. McCain also pulled even in the Midwest, moved back into the lead with men, padded his gains among Protestants and Catholics, and is favored for the first time by high school graduates.

The race tightened again Sunday as independents who'd been leaning to Obama shifted to McCain to leave that key group a toss-up. McCain also pulled even in the Midwest, moved back into the lead with men, padded his gains among Protestants and Catholics, and is favored for the first time by high school graduates.

Steve Marcus Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee, poses with supporters Tuesday in Henderson at a rally that produced a change in the candidate’s tone.*********************************************** Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin unveiled a new stump speech before a crowd of thousands at the Henderson Pavilion, appealing directly to women and softening her overall tone. “It’s about time we shattered that glass ceiling once and for all,” said Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. And the chant went up: “Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!” Palin offered a range of women- and family-friendly policy proposals not usually heard from Republican candidates. She called for...

PARK RIDGE, Ill., Oct 17, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- A new survey by management consulting firm George S. May International shows 62 percent of small business owners said they would cross party lines this year to vote for the U.S. presidential candidate that they feel will do the most to help their business. A poll of 850 small business owners across the United States found that nearly half said they feel their business is in jeopardy with 56 percent saying the current credit crunch has adversely impacted their business: -- 23 percent cited late-paying customers and vendors -- 14 percent...

Barack Obama has taken a slight lead with white independent voters for the first time in the presidential race, positioning him to capture a key demographic group that has eluded recent Democratic nominees, according to a Politico analysis of independent voting patterns. According to Gallup’s weekly average of some 6,400 registered voters, Obama now holds a 45 percent-43 percent edge over Republican John McCain with white independents. About eight in 10 independents are white. Should Obama’s support hold, he is positioned to become the first Democrat to win white independents in a two-man race since the advent of exit polling....

An evangelist and Middle East expert believes a substantial number of Jewish voters in the U.S. will vote for John McCain because they are deeply concerned about a Barack Obama presidency. Tom Doyle serves as the Middle East director for the strategic church-planting ministry e3 Partners, and recently released his new book Two Nations Under God: Why You Should Care About Israel. Not only does Doyle believe the people of Israel are nervous about a possible Barack Obama presidency, he believes a growing number of Jewish voters in the America feel the same. GOP and Democratic logos"Jews who live in...

4,134 cast ballots for president Saturday, October 4, 2008 3:20 AM By Mark Niquette THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Ohio State University student Lauren Slutzky didn't want to risk having to wait for hours in a long line to vote on Election Day. Eddie Booker, 68, of Columbus, has never voted before but wanted to be a part of history this year. Both are among the thousands of Franklin County residents who went to Veterans Memorial during the opening days of early absentee voting this week, getting registered if they weren't on the rolls and casting ballots for the Nov. 4 election....

He said he would involve former Vice President Al Gore in efforts to address the issue. "I would tap him, I would tap people who have been involved in these issues for many years." McCain noted that he disagreed with the Nobel Peace Prize winner about nuclear energy but added, "I have great respect for Al Gore."

Washington, Sept 27: If one goes by a poll conducted minutes after Friday night's debate between Republican candidate John McCain and his Democrat opponent Barack Obama last night, the former is seen garnering more uncommitted voters than the latter. 46 percent of voters surveyed said their opinion of Obama got better tonight, while 32 percent said their opinion of McCain got better, reported cbsnews.com. The poll was conducted on over 500 voters, who haven't yet decided who they would vote for and also those who have chosen a candidate but may still change their minds. 39 percent of uncommitted voters...

Pamela Brown came to see the equation-changer for herself. She is a musician, teacher, and JFK assassination buff from Eden Prairie who stood in the mob at Friday's John McCain-Sarah Palin rally at an airplane hangar in Blaine. Brown said she shifted from the Democratic side to 'undecided' when McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, named Palin, the Alaska governor, as his running mate. "She changed the equation,'' said Brown, who said she voted Democratic in the last two presidential elections but also has "a brick with my name on it in the Reagan library." She sees Palin as a refreshing...

Observant Catholics are returning to the Republican fold now that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has joined the GOP ticket - a shift that looks to be more enduring than a postconvention bounce. If the trend sticks, it will mark a partial setback for Democrats and the Obama campaign, who have vied vigorously for the pivotal votes of Roman Catholics. Before the national political conventions, presidential contenders Barack Obama and John McCain were about splitting the votes of white Catholics who attend church weekly. That was a weak showing for the GOP's Senator McCain; in 2004, President Bush carried this group...

Jessica Goral had pretty much made up her mind two weeks ago: she was going to vote for Barack Obama. Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running-mate. “She empowers a lot of women,” said Mrs Goral, a mother of two in Macomb County – a national bellwether in the battleground state of Michigan and an area rich in white, working-class swing voters who will play an important role in deciding the election in November. “I like that she’s a brand new mother, and that she has the courage to stand behind her pregnant daughter. She relates to working...

NASCAR on Ice: Every election, pollsters and pundits introduce another voter group whose views are certain to decide the outcome: soccer moms, NASCAR dads, security moms, office park dads, and (three times in the past week) Wal-Mart moms. These categories, while sometimes useful, share an important methodological flaw: On Election Day, when undecided voters finally make up their minds, exit pollsters don't ask them where they work or where they shop, what sports they watch or what games their children play. Exit polls eschew these trendy questions in favor of boring demographic perennials like age, race, gender, education, and income...

Following is the speech that Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democrats' candidate for vice president in 2000, prepared for delivery to the Republican Convention on Tuesday night.Thank you for that warm welcome. I am honored to be here. We meet tonight in the wake of a terrible storm that has hit the Gulf Coast but that hurts all of us, because we are all members of our larger American family. At times like this, we set aside all that divides us, and we come together to help our fellow citizens in need. What matters is certainly not whether we are Democrats...

DENVER — Ian Bowman-Henderson scraped together $300 — cashing in his high school graduation checks — to pay for a round-trip plane ticket from Cincinnati to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. But as the week wore on, he said he was not sure if the money had been well spent. Mr. Bowman-Henderson, 19, and some other young voters who were part of the nucleus of Mr. Obama’s presidential bid said the convention process had left them marginalized as more centrist views on issues like offshore drilling took hold. “We understand the politics of compromise and that Senator Obama has...

Barack Obama has problems with Jewish seniors in Florida, say two Democratic lawmakers there. Florida state Sen. Nan Rich told JTA that Obama surrogates have been “shocked” by the hostility they have encountered at condominiums in her area aimed at their candidate. Steve Geller, who serves as the Democratic minority leader in the Florida state Senate and represents parts of Broward County, said he was nearly chased out of the "condos" -- shorthand for retirement communities -- when he said he backed Obama. "I've noticed almost a mob mentality," Geller said. "I can change people's minds in a group of...

Barack Obama will lose the November election to John McCain unless he overhauls his message of change, outlines specific plans and reassures Americans that he is one of them, according to swing voters in Denver. The results of a focus group held by Frank Luntz, the leading American pollster, on the eve of the Democratic convention should sound alarm bells for the Obama campaign after a month in which Mr McCain, the Republican, has drawn level in the polls. "The way that he gets here to the Democratic nomination - 'change' - is not how he gets there, to the...

Sen. John McCain reminded Pennsylvanians Tuesday that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama said the state's small-town voters "cling to guns and religion" because they are "bitter," a gaffe that possibly contributed to Mr. Obama's loss in the state primary and might haunt his general election campaign in this battleground. Mr. McCain told a town hall meeting that this state's voters are the "heartland," and "beam of hope and liberty for everyone in the world." His reprise of the "bitter" flap - an off-the-cuff remark made by Mr. Obama at a private fundraising event in San Francisco prior to...

Here is the latest ad from the McCain camp. Pretty effective I think using the words of leading Dems to praise McCain. The best part comes at the end from Hillary, "I know Senator McCain has a life time of experience that he will bring to the White House and Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." Ouch. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSpcxkKlEFA

Sen. Barack Obama is doing what Republicans once thought only a presidential candidacy by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton could do - uniting the right and center. State Republican Party leaders interviewed by The Washington Times said fear of a far-left Obama presidency is warming once-skeptical voters to Sen. John McCain, fueling growing enthusiasm among Republicans that Mr. McCain's more aggressive campaigning can lead to victory...

Barack Obama has a Catholic problem. If he doesn't do better than John Kerry did in 2004 with this quintessential swing voting bloc, he won't be elected president. Obama's campaign understands this -- which is why they're considering allowing a pro-life Democrat, Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, to speak at the Denver convention. Sen. Casey's father, the late Governor of Pennsylvania Robert Casey Sr., was denied a speaking slot at the Democrats' 1992 convention for fear of offending pro-choice Democrats. But simply allowing his son to speak at the convention won't be enough to woo Catholics back. Catholics are by...

In an effort to highlight his "maverick" history of bipartisianship, John McCain has released this campaign ad. The ad features prominent democratic leaders praising McCain for his courage, honesty, and ability to reach across the aisle. http://election.newsmax.com/mccain_praise.html?s=al&promo_code=6772-1

Notwithstanding the hype about Barack Obama, here is where the presidential race stands: John McCain was within an average of 1.9% of his Democratic opponent in last week's daily Gallup tracking poll. It shouldn't be this close. Sen. Obama should be way ahead. It's not that Sen. McCain has made up a lot of ground. Pollster.com shows that the Republican steadily declined from March through June as the Democratic contest dominated the news. Mr. McCain stabilized in July, and then ticked up slightly. But the most important political fact of July is that Mr. Obama has lost altitude. Gallup now...

Is Kelsey Grammar really a Republican? Hard to tell, since he chose to be in "Swing Vote" and portray Republicans as anti-Semites and White men as rednecks, idiots, and incompetent fathers. You know when a movie about a Presidential election begins with an anti-Semitic Republican President scheming on how to keep Jews away from the polls, it's not going to be even-handed or good. Or funny. You also know that when the star of a movie--Kevin Costner--is forced to invest $20 million of his own money in an August movie release in order to get it on-screen, it's not a...

The balance of party identification in the American electorate now favors the Democratic Party by a decidedly larger margin than in either of the two previous presidential election cycles. In 5,566 interviews with registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, 36% identify themselves as Democrats, and just 27% as Republicans. The share of voters who call themselves Republicans has declined by six points since 2004, and represents, on an annualized basis, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.

“Swing Vote” revolves around a low-life trailer park drunk (Costner) who, by virtue of his young daughter's idealism, becomes responsible for deciding the fate of a closely tied presidential election. Both the incumbent Republican commander-in-chief (Kelsey Grammer) and the milquetoast liberal Democrat challenger (Dennis Hopper) descend on his small town and vie for his vote by shamelessly courting him, even going so far as to change their strongly-held beliefs to align themselves with what they mistakenly believe are his views. A small crowd at an advance screening on the Disney studio lot in Burbank, California this week laughed loudest when...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's top aides yesterday accused Sen. Barack Obama of ignoring West Virginia, saying Democrats must win the state in the fall and using her 43-point poll lead there as evidence that her longshot bid deserves to run its course. "What is the basis for the so-called 'presumptive nominee' not competing in a state that would be a key swing state?" Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson asked reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, adding that a Tuesday victory could be a turning point for his boss. A 15-point win for Mrs. Clinton, "in an atmosphere in which...

It was probably inevitable. The historic contest between a woman and an African-American for the presidential nomination is now all about white men. Not that the white male voters asked for this. They’ve been uncommitted, supporting Hillary in one contest and Barack in the next. But all that hemming and hawing has turned them into the deciding factor in the big upcoming primary in Pennsylvania. Reporters are spread all over the state, searching for white men to interview. American Legion halls under siege! Both campaigns engage in extensive research, which reveals that white men are very concerned about the economy....

Associated Press SANTA ANA PUEBLO, N.M. -- Republicans want to attract different voters. The top campaign official for the presumed GOP presidential nominee, John McCain, is identifying five groups of target voters. Rick Davis told a meeting of Republican state chairmen at Santa Ana Pueblo Friday that those groups include young voters and Hispanics. They also include what he calls "Wal-Mart moms," "Rehab Republicans" and "Facebook independents." Davis said it's not just McCain who would benefit from their support. He said they could help GOP candidates further down the ticket. He defines Rehab Republicans as longtime GOP members who haven't...

Noting a recent New York Times/CBS News poll ...... "We cannot win the election if our party is viewed 15 points less as a solution to the problems of America than the Democrat Party," Davis said. Davis pointed to five subgroups he said would be key to a victory in November. Those include "WalMart Moms," frugal suburban voters lower on the economic scale who Davis estimates will make up 17% of the electorate, and "Rehab Republicans," historically GOP voters who have grown disaffected, and a group from which Davis estimates McCain needs four out of five voters to win. Younger...

While the Democratic candidates continue to pummel each other on the campaign trail, Arizona Senator John McCain's clear path to the Republican nomination means he can turn his attention to lofty matters such as choosing his running mate - and pondering the dilemma that confronts him. McCain has succeeded in becoming the last Republican candidate standing based largely on his reputation as a "maverick" who has been willing to take risks by bucking his own party on issues such as global warming and torture and reach across the aisle to get things done. Though that persona has won him support...

MERRIMACK – Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said he’s the only GOP candidate who can win in swing states that have gone Democratic in recent elections, including New Hampshire. During an interview with The Telegraph, Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, listed a dozen states and claimed to be the only Republican who in the general election could defeat Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate.The list included New Hampshire, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota and Washington. He predicted victory over any Democratic candidate in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and said he could keep the contest close in...

A new study from David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, and David Kirby, executive director of the America's Future Foundation, have released a new study that asserts that - surprise! - libertarians are the swing vote in national elections... Any group that is 13 percent of the electorate is big enough to swing elections, if they're positioned right on the political see-saw. It's not really the size of the libertarian vote that matters so much as it is where they stand on issues - and whether or not they currently feel more at home or less...

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. made it clear as he began taking questions at yesterday's National Italian American Foundation luncheon that he couldn't reveal any of the Supreme Court's forthcoming opinions. But did he at least give a hint? Two of the court's biggest remaining cases focus on the First Amendment, and while Alito didn't mention either, he did make it clear that any restrictions on speech face a high hurdle with him. "I'm a very strong believer in the First Amendment and the right of people to speak and to write," Alito said in response to a question of...

President Bush finally got to reshape the Supreme Court during its just-completed 2005-06 term, appointing its first two new members in more than a decade. But he didn't have much immediate success in changing its direction. Bush's appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, lived up to expectations that they would ally with the court's conservative faction. The administration's hopes for a rightward shift on an already-conservative court were largely checked, however, by the pivotal figure of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy's role was illustrated most dramatically Thursday, the final day of the court's term, when he joined a...

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy lashed out at our humble profession last week, castigating editorial writers whom he said frequently "misinterpret" the Court's reasoning, according to an article in Monday's Washington Post. The Justice didn't single out any newspaper, though we'll admit to having referred to his jurisprudence on more than one occasion as "protean." We'd humbly reply to Justice Kennedy that it is precisely this trait that has invited such media mau-mauing. While nominated as a conservative by Ronald Reagan, Justice Kennedy has proven on the High Court that he is open for intellectual rent: from his flip-flop on...

At last week's oral argument in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, probably the term's most important case, the outcome was all but decided when Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke. He strongly suggested by his questions that he would join the four moderate justices in rejecting the Bush administration's position on a key aspect of its war-on-terror powers. That would be enough, because these days, the law is pretty much what Justice Kennedy says it is. With Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement, there is a new swing justice in town. If the court's two newest members, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito...

SOCIAL STUDIES Where The Missing Middle Went By Jonathan Rauch, National Journal © National Journal Group Inc. Friday, Feb. 17, 2006 In 1992, the political scientist Raymond E. Wolfinger of the University of California (Berkeley), along with five of his students, published The Myth of the Independent Voter, a book that posed a challenge to -- well, to people like me. For some time, I've been saying that the key to American politics is in the center. Independents make up about a third of the electorate, yet are neglected by the two increasingly extreme major parties. Whichever party manages to...

John Gizzi, veteran political editor of the conservative weekly Human Events, normally is an optimist. Over the years I have watched him find the one possible thread to explain the rationale for the election of a conservative Republican. John knows more about politics than any 10 political junkies combined have forgotten. If there is a way to see a possibility for a Republican victory Gizzi makes the case. And that is as it should be inasmuch as he is writing to give conservatives hope. He and his paper's message are always the same: "Shoulder on." You can imagine my shock...

The most powerful man in America has the last name of Kennedy, but thankfully is not named Teddy and is no relation to JFK. You could make the case that the President or the Federal Chairman is more powerful, but for my money Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy is now the most powerful man in America. With the appointment of Justice Alito, the Supreme Court is split with 4 solidly liberal justices and 4 solidly conservative justices, leaving Kennedy to decide the controversial cases. Justice Anthony Kennedy was born July 23, 1936 has been a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court...

I have been watching the Judicial Committee and collateral news events for a long time. I am struck by the continued use of the term "Swing Vote"! Now, I am an attorney but certainly not an expert on the supremes. My Question is, WHAT IS A SWING VOTE? Do the Justices vote in order of senority? No, that would make Souter or Ginsburg the final vote. Did the Court decide to make SDO'C wait until the adults voted before allowing her to speak out? Is she some revered mental wiz that is, by virtue of her supreme knowledge, allowed to...

Kennedy may check the Supreme Court's tilt toward the right.The Swing Set: Kennedy chats with O’Connor, who may have penned her last ruling this weekJan. 30, 2006 issue - When conservative Washington lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court talk about "the Greenhouse Effect," they don't mean global warming. The Greenhouse in question is Linda Greenhouse, the longtime and esteemed Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times. The "effect" is to subtly push Supreme Court justices to the left. Unless a jurist comes to the court with very strongly held, or even fixed, conservative views, there is a tendency...

Who'll Be the Supreme Court's Next Swinger? Howard J. Bashman Special to Law.com 01-17-2006 When Justice Sandra Day O'Connor finally retires from serving on the U.S. Supreme Court, the high court's center of gravity unquestionably will shift. And some other justice will become the Court's swinger -- that is, the key swing vote. For reasons explained in my essay from last week, I don't expect Samuel A. Alito Jr. to become the Court's newest centrist. Indeed, the smart money is on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to be the Court's swing vote going forward. Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter,...

Anthony Kennedy—the new Sandra Day O'Connor. Lost in last week's cacophony about the critical role of Sandra Day O'Connor as sole and exclusive swing voter on the U.S. Supreme Court was any sign of respect for the other sole and exclusive swing voter on the U.S. Supreme Court: Anthony M. Kennedy. Kennedy's majority opinion in today's big physician-assisted-suicide case serves as the perfect reminder of who's going to call the shots in the near future. The 6-3 opinion in Gonzales v. Oregon—a decision upholding Oregon's physician-assisted-suicide law from attack by the Attorney General's Office—sharply outlines the court's Anthony Kennedy-shaped future....

The Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito told us more about the Senators than it did about Judge Alito.First, there were those long-winded preambles to "questions" for the judge. Then there were the Mickey Mouse maneuvers and insinuations, spiced here and there with outright lies.The ridiculousness of the charges was classically illustrated by Senator Joseph Biden's claim that Alito had been part of a group that was trying to keep minorities and women out of Princeton. Apparently wanting everyone to meet the same admissions standards is considered to be the same as being against minorities and women.To dramatize his...

The Swing Vote Yesterday George W. Bush made his second appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. As I had feared, this appointment was made in the name of what I will call political diversity. It appears that more than half of the qualified potential candidates were disqualified because they didn't fit the mold of the politically correct definition of diversity. And so you have, Harriet Miers is your next Associate Justice of the United States. Was this a bad pick? I don't think so. ...

Immigrants in U.S. new swing voters in Mexico electionTue Aug 16, 2005 8:07 AM ET By Alonso Soto CHICAGO (Reuters) - Former Chicago businessman and Mexican immigrant Timoteo Manjarrez recently decided to run for mayor in his hometown of Teloloapan, a poor city in the South of Mexico where he returned to live six years ago. "I always dreamed of coming back to my roots. Now we are going to get this city out of the backwardness it is submerged in," the 42-year-old Manjarrez said in a telephone interview. In July, eager to raise support for his election effort, the...

Two Sandra Day O'Connors have served as Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court. It makes a world of difference which one President Bush chooses to replace. First, we look at the late O'Connor, the one who is retiring. The L.A. Times asserted this week that O'Connor “alone was in the majority of every one of the court’s 13 5-4 decisions this last term.” There are two tiny problems with this assertion. There were 24 such decisions this Term. And, Justices Souter and Scalia were in the majority in them more often than Justice O’Connor. See SCOTUSBlog for the facts....

In examining the current two-party system, it becomes clear that a growing majority of Americans fit into the conservative movement. It is agreed that both parties are moving further to the right and left, respectively, but it has been Republicans that have grown their base by facing issues realistically, and by spreading hope instead of despair. Republicans are gaining the support of mainstream, rational-thinking people whose party affiliation was previously tenuous.