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These people have a screw lose. Here we go with the gallop pole caught a surge.

People change very little as a campaign progresses. It takes a major outsice stimulus to change thigs. If some of these book writers would actually go out and poll they would find the margins change very little compared to the turn out. People were pretty well decided weeks before the election.

A presidents coming and going is not a big deal unless what he does effects the get out the vote efforts. In this last election the Repubicans for the first time in my memory has a ground game. Rove had proved in 2000 with some experimental precincts that real live local people calling voters increased repubican turn out by 5.2 percent.

So this time in 41 states Republicans used real local people to make calls to registered voters. A lot of the people at the Bush rallies were the people recruited to contact voters. They got a real pep talk about working to get out the vote. They left and did exactly that. In a state with 1.5 million republican votes that made a differnce of about 80,000 votes. It made a real difference.

But those of you who have been following Louisiana know that the differnece between the polls is turnout. IN louisiana that is black turn out and white turn out. One pollster counted black turn out at 28 percent. He showed a big big Landrieu win. The problem is the highest Black turn out in hisory is 26 percent and 23 percent is the average. If you use 25 percent it shows a Terrell victory. 26 percent shows a tie. 27 percent a landriew victory and 28 a Landrieu blow out.Most of the pulblic polls in the 2002 election exagerated the Black turn out. Most of the public polls in 2000 underestimated the Black turn out.

The nation is gradually trending right. The majority of State legislatures are under Republican control for the first time since 1932. The Republicans have a majority of state legislatures. They have both houses of congress and the presidency.

The biggest change I see is that Democrats are mostly running liberal democrats for office. For the most party the Republicans are runing people who can win. They ran a leftist Coleman in Minnesota. They ran a very centrist in Missouri. They ran a centrist in New Hampshire and North Carolina. They ran conservatives in Georgia and Texas.

I think the democrats are running people who toe the party line. The repubicans are running people who can win.

That means the conservatives will run the nation for the nest few years.

If the democrats don't stop running on gut reactions they are going to be out on their a$$.

Nice reply.

My instincts tell me that the reasoned Democrats (are there any?) will be at odds with the wacky left in the party. This will make for a cocktail of deviousness and shrillness. In the meantime, Bush and company will not be sitting on their hands. The President has the initiative and the momentum. He will define the next battle and many battles thereafter. It will be an uphill run for the Dems. FWIW.

Norm Coleman a leftist? I didn't get that impression. In fact in the debates with Walter Mondale; he seemed quite conservative, or maybe right of center to me!

Thanks for your analysis which I find to be better considered than the author's. Your explanation of Rove's ground game clearly explains the last election. But lets explore the next. How do you deal with the emerging Hispanic plurality if your are Rove? Why are there such apparent differences between Florida, Texas and New York on the one hand and California (and New Mexico?) on the other? How much of the Hispanic vote do the Pubs need to maintain an overall majority? 20%? 30%? 40%?

I would be grateful for your thoughts.

I find your post interesting. Could you tell me the exact number of state legislatures that the GOP holds? I read that the GOP gained appr. 200 legislative seats this election, which is totally contrary to the usual 350 that are lost during a mid-term election (for the President's party).

You're also quite correct about the dumb dem idea that the GOP only won because of a last minute, unexpected surge. The democrats were lackluster through the whole year.

Your discourse is quite accurate, but I must disagree with a couple of your assessment of some of the Republican candidates that won Senate races. I don't exactly what you mean by the "leftist" Coleman. For instance, Mr. Coleman is pro-life, citing that as one of the main reasons he left the dem party a few years ago. You also called Jim Talent "very centrist". Mr. Talent is actually a strong social conservative, he just doesn't talk much about it. As a congressman, he's had a strong pro-life voting record and he's also anti-gay, having, for instance, voted in favor of banning gay adoption in DC.

Because Bob Smith was so vocally conservative, it seemed that John Sununu was a typical New England Republican liberal. I'll give a run down on some of his votes on social issues:

Voted YES on banning human cloning, including medical research. (Jul 2001)
Voted YES on banning Family Planning funding in US aid abroad. (May 2001)
Voted YES on federal crime to harm fetus while committing other crimes. (Apr 2001)
Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)
Voted YES on barring transporting minors to get an abortion. (Jun 1999)

Sununu was also given an 'F' by a gay rights website that extensively reviews each Congress person's voting record. (For instance the same site gave Nancy Johnson a 'C'.)

And you're probably right about Mrs. Dole, though she's announced that she would support a federal Amendment to ban abortions. And, yes, Chambliss and Cornyn are pretty conservative.

Bottom line: a lot of conservatives, whether vocal or reserved, were elected this year, and thank God for it.

Here we go with the gallop poll caught a surge.

Yeah, I don't buy this either. These "last minute surges" toward the Republicans happen too often to be attributable to actual, on-the-ground events like Presidential visits.

I think the phenomenon is more related to people feeling pressured by pollsters into giving an answer on how they will vote before they have actually sat down and thought seriously about it. The prevailing cultural wind -- Gore's "zeitgeist" -- still blows pro-Democrat in the broadcast media, so that becomes a quick-and-easy thing to tell the pollster to get rid of him. Three days later the pollster is out telling the world that the Democrats are on a big roll and will do very well. The same guy calls around again the night before the election and finds that a huge chunk of people are now telling him that they will vote for the Republican. So then we get the "race closing" and "too close to call" stories. That happened in Reagan's victory over Jimmy Carter, it happened in 1994, and it just happened again.

How long ago was it that Dick Morris was telling us that the Democrats were going to take the House? Morris didn't need to just make that up... he has access to enough polling data that there was something in there that pointed to such a result. But it was just people being glib with the pollster on the phone... telling him something 'acceptable' to get rid of him.

I think it's another case where the Democrats produce their own BS, pump it out through the media, and then believe it themselves when they hear it come back.