When they vote they vote for the winner in a single member district!
Republicans can beat Democrats every time simply by convincting a bunch of Democrats to not show up to vote, while simultaneously convincing a bunch of Republicans to show up to vote who would otherwise ignore the election.
Both parties have such folks. With Republicans Socons and Religiouscons have demonstrated that they will stay away at the drop of the hat so as a rule of thumb clever politicians just lie to them. Only a fool would tell them to go away, or mess with their primaries.
In the case of Democrats any African American politician will tell you that as soon as black voters detect weakness in the Democrat they'll stay home. They are less prone to vote on social issues, but they will vote on long term unemployment problems.
This is the reason so many Democrat mouthpieces accuse Republicans of attempting to suppress the vote BTW ~ and as long as there are more Democrats than Republicans they will continue to make the charge.
The pollsters look for some reflection of this balance in all of their results. If anything gets really out of whack they don't report it.
So, this year the Republican problem is that Obama got 69 million votes last time, and that's 4 million more voters than we have even if everybody shows up. We also seem to have soured a number of Socons and Religiouscons on the idea of voting ~ and we may have even PO'd some of the Fiscalcons.
It's clear that suppressing the Democrat vote would be useful. Photo IDs might tackle a few hundred thousand of them, but how do you talk the others out of voting? Not clear we've got a story sufficient to cause the Democrats to give up all hope ~ so that means we are depending on them to come to that conclusion themselves.
Folks, it won't work!
It takes more effort than the Republican party is currently prepared to muster. Not to sound like a gloomy gus, but I'm waiting on someone to tell us how we will do it ~ and poll watching ain't the way.
Yep.
In one deep red suburb of Dayton, for ex., it was the first one we went to on election night to look at the raw #s: This should have been over 95% McCain. In fact, he was at about 75%. A female judge acquaintance---WAY up in the county and state GOP---was talking after dinner. She said she couldn't believe her daughter (a Republican) voted for Obama. Her son said, "Mom, don't you know that ALL your children (5) voted for Obama?" Now, I can say with near certainty that if any of them vote again this time, it won't be for Obama.
Of that 80m, a HUGE chunk are "Reagan Dems who despise what Obama has done. A majority? Course not. But of your 80M Dems, how many are located in three states---IL, CA, and NY---that don't matter any way as they are never in play?
The real question you should be considering, and the only number that matters is, outside those three states, how many Dems do you have? Because outside those three states, I think some Dems are VERY "coachable" and yes, coachable by Romney and Ryan.
And all "poll watching" is is observing the only evidence we have. And so far, the evidence is pointing to a significant GOP electoral victory---and I keep harping on that because CA, NY, and IL are NOT IMPORTANT. They are already factored in as hopeless.
When you see repeated polls from MI saying Romney is ahead, or in WI saying Romney is ahead, or other "Dem" states where Romney is ahead or even, it says something. And what it says probably ain't what you want to hear, which is, maybe Romney isn't as bad as you hope, and maybe he DOES appeal to an awful lot of voters. And, if we had any semblance of a truly objective press, you would already know that. So to the extent that it's possible, people like me have to try to convince people like you---who already are biased against Romney---that in fact he's doing damn well.
Yep.
In one deep red suburb of Dayton, for ex., it was the first one we went to on election night to look at the raw #s: This should have been over 95% McCain. In fact, he was at about 75%. A female judge acquaintance---WAY up in the county and state GOP---was talking after dinner. She said she couldn't believe her daughter (a Republican) voted for Obama. Her son said, "Mom, don't you know that ALL your children (5) voted for Obama?" Now, I can say with near certainty that if any of them vote again this time, it won't be for Obama.
Of that 80m, a HUGE chunk are "Reagan Dems who despise what Obama has done. A majority? Course not. But of your 80M Dems, how many are located in three states---IL, CA, and NY---that don't matter any way as they are never in play? For ex, the voter advantage for Dems just in NY, MA, CA, and IL is a whopping 9.3 million! Now, considering that only about six million votes have to switch, by that statistic alone it's not only possible but likely that six million Americans have already decided Obama must go. When you factor in your "stay home" quotient, we're talking serious GOP advantage here in the "states that count"---WI, MI, OH, VA, FL, PA, NE, NV, NM, IA, MN, and PA.
"Poll watching" is observing the only evidence we have, such as it is. And so far, the evidence is pointing to a significant GOP electoral victory---and I keep harping on that because CA, NY, and IL are NOT IMPORTANT in the sense of being in play. They are already factored in as hopeless for Republicans.
When you see repeated polls from MI saying Romney is ahead, or in WI saying Romney is ahead, or other "Dem" states where Romney is ahead or even, it says something. And what it says probably ain't what you want to hear, which is, maybe Romney isn't as bad as you hope, and maybe he DOES appeal to an awful lot of voters. And, if we had any semblance of a truly objective press, you would already know that. So to the extent that it's possible, people like me have to try to convince people like you---who already are biased against Romney---that in fact he's doing damn well.