Free Republic

In the course of making electoral prognostications, political pundits this year are still referencing what is known as the “sixth year slump”. This is the slump from which the congressional party of the President inevitably suffers. Well, almost inevitably. The trend was seriously disrupted in 1998 – when the Democrats, despite sporting a president who was having a very bad sixth year, actually gained 5 House seats. It was essentially gospel in the lead-up to 1998 that the Republicans would gain seats. But, of course, they did not. And so, the importance of the sixth year slump as a predictive...

Why did President Bush not do very well in Congress this year? Was it because he was politically inept? Was it because he offended members of his own party? Was it because they were afraid that sticking with him would kill any chance of reelection?All of these are possibly correct. But I think that there is a more efficient answer -- and that is that the President, in dealing with Congress, simply bit off more than he could chew. He thought that there were consensus positions for reforming certain issues, but there were none. He misread the number of people...

One of the most enjoyable and exciting parts of following a presidential campaign is the relative ease with which you can figure out the state of the race. It all comes down to the head-to-head polls. Last October many close observers knew the day of the week and the time of the day that the important polls came out in the Kerry v. Bush race. It was a real treat to be able to get new information that was reliable and accurate.Unfortunately, in congressional elections, such data is harder to come by. One must be much more wary about state...

Journalists and pundits seem to be writing an advance copy of the political story of 2006 – the beginning of the end of the contemporary Republican Party. A few have been prepared to write the GOP’s 2006 obituary, interestingly enough, since Bush’s second inaugural. But with the President’s numbers sinking, the House majority leader and the Vice-President’s Chief of Staff under indictment, and the Republican agenda seemingly non-existent – many more political observers are now speculating whether next year will mark the end of the contemporary GOP.The question I shall answer here is whether there are grounds for this conclusion....

From his Hyde Park apartment, using a 2001 Dell computer with a dial-up modem, Jay Cost knew something the John Kerry campaign did not: How to win. The 26-year-old doctoral student at the University of Chicago saw weakness in the Kerry campaign early -- and strengths in President Bush's re-election effort -- that he tracked on a daily "blog," a Web-based discussion site he launched in early fall called The Horserace Blog. Not only did his analysis win mention on several prominent news outlets including CNN and Rush Limbaugh's radio program, it became a campaign tool for insiders and political...

Beware the Gallup Poll That 49-49 result is due to Gallup's decision to allocate the remaining undecided voters based upon a tried-and-true formula -- 9 to 1 for the challenger. Pew, on the other hand, decided to allocate the undecideds they found equally. This is what Pew had to say: "Pew's final survey suggests that the remaining undecided vote may break only slightly in Kerry's favor." So, it appears that Pew's data told them something that the CW of undecided voters, i.e. their breaking toward the incumbent, is off. Gallup just did what my 9th grade geometry called a "plug...

1. Here is a good sign for BC04. Elenaror Clift of Newsweek has a new column out in which she predicts a Kerry win. Most of the piece is anti-Bush blather. But then we come down to the real meat and potatoes. Unfortunately, it's only a single serving. This is the best and only reason she has for this prediction: With more than two thirds of the undecided voters saying the country is on the wrong track, Kerry should win. Bush got 47.9 percent of the vote in 2000, and that’s where he is stuck today. A record voter turnout...