¨Rasmussen is assuming that 6% more Democrats than Republicans will vote. This is simply unrealistic. Democrats haven’t had more than a 4 points advantage in any Presidential election since 1980 (and how well did THAT work out for Jimmy Carter....but I digress). The last time that the Dems had as much as a 4 point advantage was in 2000, when Gore nevertheless won the popular vote by less than 0.5%. In 2004, an essentially equal number of Democrats and Republicans voted. Two years ago, in a horrible election for the GOP, the Dem advantage was only 3 points.¨
That is simply not true. You seem to be confusing stated party ID with actual turnout. In 2006 the Democrats had a 5.4% voting advantage for House candidates and a 9.4% voting advantage for Senate candidates. 2008 is arguably an even more dangerous year for Republicans than 2006 because of the downturn in the economy. Perhaps the base will come out strongly and prove Rasmussen wrong, but given that the Democrats turned out to the tune of a combined 7% MORE than Republicans in 2006 and the economy has taken a bad turn, Rasmussen is not off the rocker for assuming a similar voting pattern once again this year.
Democratic House candidates may have received 5.4% more votes than Republican House candidates, and so on. But I am talking about actual Party ID. In 2006, the breakdown was D37, R34, and I29, and together this mix cast 5.4% more votes for Democratic House candidates than Republican House candidates. It turns out that the Independents voted for Democrats by a 57-39 margin, compared to 49-46 in 2004 -- and that's essentially why the House flipped the way it did.
Incidentally, while retrieving this information, I noticed something else that was very interesting. In 2004, the Independents favored Kerry, but only by a single point: 49-48. In 2000, they favored Dubya 47-45. In the Gallup polling for Sept. 22-28, McCain led this group by nine points. With McCain doing better with Independents than Dubya did and holding his own GOP base, Obama is going to need ridiculously high turnout with his own base (signficantly better than Kerry, who is already the second highest vote-getter in Presidential election history) in order to win the election.
But hey, all the media polls say Obama is going to win in a landslide. Past election history doesn't matter. Actual polling data doesn't matter. What matters is that the media says that Obama will win and resistance from stupid Republicans is futile. Right?
The turnout will be much closer to 2004’s model than 2006’s. If you truly believe otherwise, fine. You’re not alone. But you’re also fooling yourself.