It is not ancient history when it comes to losing one of his core constituencies, i.e., the Indian vote. He won easily in 2002 and 2004, but that does not mean that he will win in 2006. Circumstances change. The Abramoff affair, his wife receiving $100,000. The quality of the candidate who just happened to be the former mayor of Tempe. If you looked at the Mitchell ads, the main theme was corruption with mentions of Hayworth supporting Bush's stay the course in Iraq and stem cell research. No mention is made of illegal immigration.
The dems did energize their vote, but Hayworth couldn't do enough, the 180 on immigration just didn't impress people. That's all I was saying.
The Dems doubled their vote from 2002, a non-election year and matched their vote in 2004, a Presidential year. Hayworth increased his vote total by 10% from 2002, but the Dems doubled their's. Hayworth's vote total declined by 66,000 votes from 2004 while the Dem votes remained essentially the same. The question to be asked is why couldn't Hayworth turn out more Rep voters. I think, based on late polls showing him ahead by double digits, Hayworth didn't do enough to get his voters to the polls.
The pro-amnesty crowd wants to pounce on the Hayworth loss and blame it on his anti-illegal immigration stance. It just wasn't that simple. That's all I am saying.
I'm not saying that the anti-immigration thing caused tons of people to vote against him. They all voted for the immigration propositions.
It just wasn't enough to interest most voters in keeping Hayworth. The grassroots support for tough-on-immigration is non-existent -- fool's gold.