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Pollsters were under a handicap in 2000. The 1992 and 1996 elections had the Ross Perot votes. Pollsters can tell you how the Democrats, Repubicans, and independents will vote. What they have trouble telling us is how many of each are going to vote. They guessed the Demcratic turn out too low in 2000. Many in 2000 were using the last two man race of 1988... It was 15 million votes too low. They will guess democratic turn out too high in 2004.

Remember that when the Democratic base (mostly working class people) are happy they tend not to vote. The fact that the unions could not get out the vote for Gephardt in Iowa speaks volumes. Remember all the talk of Unions getting out the vote in Iowa? They failed to get out the vote. The Demcorats were not motivated to vote.

When the economy is good fewer Democrats turn out to vote.

In every state except New Hampshire the Democratic primary turn out has been quite low. If the Democratic general Election turn out is much the same, Kerry will be toast.

The media is making much about how mad the Demoratic primary voters are at Bush. But only a bit over a third of the Democrats are voting in most states. The remainder are not motivated enough to vote. That is not good for Democrats. That says a majority of Democrats are not motivated against bush enough to come out and vote.

I would bet Rasmussen and others are using the 2000 turn out numbers to gauge 2004. The Democrat turn out will be a lot lower.

For example in 1992 over 105 million people voted. In 1996 only 95 million people voted. The Democratic turn out is going to be down this year.. just as the Republican turn out in 1996 was down.

No matter how much you hate to hear it, moderate Republicans were not all that unhappy with Clinton in 1996. In 2004 moderate Democrats are not all that unhappy with Bush.

The unhappy Democrats are voting in the primaries and the media is reporting them as typical of all Democrats. But a huge number of Democrats are not voting in the primaries. The mad ones are mostly the ones that are voting. They are not typical.

No matter how much you hate to hear it, moderate Republicans were not all that unhappy with Clinton in 1996.

I love to hear that, it confirms what I think of moderate Republicans.....

Remember that when the Democratic base (mostly working class people) are happy they tend not to vote.

Um...last time I looked, the working class was about 94.6% of the population.

They had record turnout in NH.

I would bet Rasmussen and others are using the 2000 turn out numbers to gauge 2004...if memory serves correctly, I think Rasmussen's problem in 2000 was that he stopped polling the weekend before the election or for some other reason missed the last minute and highly unusual swing of most of the undecideds back to Gore, who was in effect the "incumbent". The sneak attack thirty-year old DUI charges against Bush that Friday seems to have been what caused the stampede and threw Rasmussen's prediction of a comfortable win for Bush out the window - from what I've seen your analysis of what's driving the voters in the 'rat primaries seems right on target, and hatred is a difficult motivation to keep going - but who would have thought the 'rats could have kept the phoney National Guard/AWOL story on the front pages for so long - maybe Rasmussen et al should include in their projections of turnout some correction factor based on the balance of pro/anti candidate stories in the press which might tend to encourage or discourage voters going to the polls......

I thought I heard someone say that only 10% of the Dems voted in the primaries......sounds like a terrible turnout to me.....especially since we were told (by the liberal media) how angry & energized they are.

In every state except New Hampshire the Democratic primary turn out has been quite low. If the Democratic general Election turn out is much the same, Kerry will be toast. The media is making much about how mad the Demoratic primary voters are at Bush. But only a bit over a third of the Democrats are voting in most states. The remainder are not motivated enough to vote. That is not good for Democrats. That says a majority of Democrats are not motivated against bush enough to come out and vote.

I think you're making good points here. Also, the economy has been bad since Clinton was in office, if we want to call it bad. The deficit came about because the economy slowed, not because of the liberation of Iraq. The economy slowed because the Saudis wanted to balance their budget and so have been engineering an oil shortage to inflate the price.

The price of energy is in everything, but particularly obviously in the food supply. Diesel fuel or gasoline is needed to plow, plant, fertilize, harvest, glean, transport, process, package, ship, distribute, and pick up from the store.

I dunno about anyone else here, but of late I've noticed a slow fade of food prices. Milk is cheaper, pasteurized orange juice is cheaper, meat is cheaper. Could be that sales have been proliferating to juice slow sales? The retail price of gasoline haven't moved much out of a 20 cent range, and moves tend to be rapid upward and slow downward. We've not seen $1.80 a gallon in a very long time.

Also around here, the amount of vacant retail space has tightened up. Over the past few years there have been a number of makeovers on local retail strip malls and the like, which was a symptom of retail vacancy rates (lease rates slip when there's a lot of vacancies, making it easy to lose tenants). Business has been slowly picking up around here, although the job market dried up at least a couple of years ago.

Coverage of course has been things like the Electrolux plant closing. That won't happen until 2005 -- employees offered $12 thousand a head in concessions, which shows that they make a lot of cash, and don't wanna see the gravy train pull out. Electrolux makes those $thousands vacuum cleaners sold door to door, among other things.

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