Tuesday, November 03, 2009

HORSERACE

Those Independents? Lots of Them Used to Be Republicans

I would note that for the past year, we've been hearing about how fewer and fewer voters self-identify as Republicans; thus, pollsters insist, Republicans make up a smaller percentage of the electorate than they have in many years.

Of course, most of those frustrated departing Republicans, angry over Bush, or McCain, or high spending, or Mark Foley, or Harriet Miers, or what have you, go on to become independents; very few voters flip directly from one party to another overnight.

So you end up with a pool of independents that is more conservative, and more dominated by anti-tax, anti-spending ex-Republicans. And then, in this election, we've seen the atmosphere shaped by runaway spending by a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president, with unemployment approaching 10 percent.

So we shouldn't be that surprised to see Republicans winning independents by a wide margin; not too long ago, those voters identified themselves as Republicans.

11/03 08:56 PMShare