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Partisan Trends In January and February, while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were in the early stages of the battle for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, the number of Americans who considered themselves to be Democrats surged to record highs. The numbers have stabilized since then, leaving the Democratic Party with a significant advantage over Republicans in terms of partisan identification. During the month of June, 41.0% of Americans considered themselves to be Democrats, 31.5% said they were Republicans and 27.5% were not affiliated with either major party. This marks the fifth straight month that the number of Democrats has been...

The balance of party identification in the American electorate now favors the Democratic Party by a decidedly larger margin than in either of the two previous presidential election cycles. In 5,566 interviews with registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, 36% identify themselves as Democrats, and just 27% as Republicans. The share of voters who call themselves Republicans has declined by six points since 2004, and represents, on an annualized basis, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.

Jann Wenner interviews Ruy Teixeira, David Gergen, and Peter Hart....generally good analysis. Let's start with the major factors in Bush's victory. RUY TEIXEIRA: If you want to look at ground zero of how Bush expanded his coalition, the key change from 2000 was that he did a lot better among white voters. His margin of victory among whites widened from twelve to seventeen points -- and almost all of that was among white working-class women. DAVID GERGEN: The decrease in the gender gap alone was enough to give him the victory. But he also increased his margin among Hispanics. And...

Using County-by-County election return data from USA Today together with County boundary data from the US Census' Tiger database we produced the following graphic depicting the results. Of course, blue is for the democrats, red is for the republicans, and green is for all other. Each county's color is a mix of these three color components in proportion to the results for that county. Counties shown in black represent either missing election data or a mismatch between the US Census data and the USA Today data. For example, the New England states' election return data is given for each municipality...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com --------- Hispanic voters' role in '04 seen overstated By Joseph Curl THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published September 21, 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While President Bush and Sen. John Kerry have set up aggressive campaigns to draw Hispanic voters, the nation's largest minority bloc is unlikely to play a decisive role in the 2004 presidential election, based on their past voting records and their populations in battleground states. Although election analysts predict more than 7 million of the nation's 40 million Hispanics will vote on Election Day, the bloc represents 7 percent or higher in just five battleground states: Arizona,...

Arnold was supposed to win. Any talk about how brilliant his advisors are is silly. Arnold deserves credit for taking the opportunity, but that's about it. The recognition for what happened in California on October 7, 2003 goes to Rep. Darrell Issa. Whether you were for or against the recall (Democrat, Republican, Independent, unaffiliated, undeclared, whatever), one has to recognize Rep. Issa's historic accomplishment to successfully execute a recall of California's executive officer. - snip So why was Governor Davis recalled and why was Arnold elected governor of California? Two reasons that should come as no surprise. Californians just didn't...