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First, this is asking people "are you a D, R, or I?" so registration doesn't matter.

Second, strategic party switching is a very small phenomenon. Only in the MS Dem primary is there any evidence that it was large enough to have any noticeable result.

Third, this trend is several years old, not weeks.

Rs need to get their heads out of the sand and stop making excuses. Being R is not popular right now. And people who don't already identify with Rs are not too keen on voting for Rs.
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I'm not saying she'd be easier to beat, but it's easy to understand why it's possible she's easier to beat: Check her poll numbers in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. They are better then Obama in all 4 states.

"I ain't never votin' fo another Democrat so long as I can draw breath! I'll vote for a dog first!" - Leola Thomas

Polling numbers can change. We should never look at that as our sole determinant.

I go back and forth on this issue of electability. It is true that Hillary has huge negatives, unlike Barack. It is true that she is unlikeable, also unlike Barack. It is true that she is not a good speaker (although a better debator) unlike Barack. And it is true that she has more of a record to hit, especially on corruption issues, also unlike Barack.

But it is important to remember that Hillary has some positives over Barack as well. First, she is much smoother, and will not make the kind of mistakes he has made (like bomb Pakistan, hang out with Jeremiah Wright, refuse to reign in his wife, etc.) (This does not mean she will make no mistakes - just less.) Second, she is much meaner, and unlike Barack, and possibly McCain, will not hesitate to use underhanded and dirty tactics to win. And third, she is a white woman, which gives her a slight edge over a black man in the general election. (BTW, many of the voters who object to Barack's race are actually Democrats and swing voters, although you will never hear this from the media.)

Basically, I have just come to the conclusion that I don't know who I want to face in the general, and thus I will let the Dems decide. (Although, if forced to vote in the Dem primary, I would go with Obama, since I think he is less corrupt than is Clinton.) Remember - be careful what we wish for; you just might get it.

I carry no water for JMc, but you seriously are not thinking clearly if you think the escapades of HRC and BHO are not, and will not play a huge part...

" Got to love the Lord for making things like that."
Morally Compromised

will be some conservatives who will NEVER vote for him....that is not a tack to be taking when the Democrat party is imploding on a daily basis.

Freedom of Religion not Freedom from Religion

But, keep in mind, GWB is also pretty unpopular with conservatives on certain matters. So, it's not as simple as saying that McCain separating himself from Bush would give him fits with conservatives or Republicans.

McCain's problem, it seems to me, is that he's on the wrong side (by "wrong" in this sense, I mean "unpopular") on some pretty important and emotional issues -- chiefly immigration and the war.

And I think McCain's bed is basically made on both of those issues. However, he can create some separation between himself and Bush based on the success of the surge: he'd been calling for it for more than 2 years before it happened.

He can also create separation between himself and Bush on the matter of spending, and credibly so. And this is something that conservatives would love to hear.

Do you mean unpopular in the general population or among conservatives?

In every major poll, McCain's position on immigration (enforcement and some sort of guest/worker or path to citizenship) has super-majority support as opposed to deportation. He's on the unpopular side with respect to Tancredo conservatives on that issue.

Whereas, on the War he is on the popular side with respect to conservatives. But with the general population, he is on the unpopular side. I think it's important to note that most polls show that voters trust McCain on Iraq more than Hillary or Obama. So despite disagreeing somewhat about the War, voters still value his knowledge and experience in the area.

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Well, there's a false choice if I ever heard one. And let's be clear here -- whatever John McCain is saying now, he fought very, very hard against "enforcement first" legislation during the amnesty debate.

If you think that John McCain is popular -- among Americans in general, or conservatives in particular -- on immigration, you've been following a different history than I've been following these past couple years.

To say that we either take Tancredo's view or McCain's view is a false choice.

There was a massive backlash against the McCain-Kennedy bill -- and it was something like a 75-25 issue. Trust me, those 75% weren't all a bunch of Tancredites.

BTW, when I said that he was on the "wrong side", I was speaking pretty broadly. With the population at large, he's on the wrong side of immigration and the war. With conservatives, he is (or has been) on the wrong side of immigration, taxes, environmental issues, detention policy, campaign finance, tobacco liability, and sundry other things (including, if his latest FP speech is to be believed, multilateralist US foreign policy).

Here's a round up of immigration polling. Here's one of the many polls showing widespread support for Comprehensive Reform.

"With the population at large, he's on the wrong side of immigration and the war." I think that's right on the War, wrong on immigration.

Immigration is one of very few issues where voters support McCain over Obama/Clinton (Iraq, humorously enough, is one of the other 2 or 3 issues). His position is smack dab in the middle (which is why he is attached so much from the right).
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If public opinion was accurately reflected in that poll, McCain Kennedy would've passed with flying colors.

It didn't -- and that's because there was a backlash from voters on it. While it's tempting to say that it was just squeaky wheels, I think you have to look at what really happened there.

Congress was stopped dead in its tracks....with some legislators (like Brownback) even changing their vote at the last minute to not be tagged with it. You had Trent Lott saying that something had to be done about talk radio, Kit Bond getting in a heated discussion on the air, etc. etc.

All that -- and you expect me to believe that the public was 80/20 in favor of the provisions in that bill? I'll never, ever buy that.

Nor will I buy that our two choices on the matter were McCain's and Tancredo's.

have a lot of power. Polls show national support for stricter gun laws as well, but they never pass Congress (and momentum is the other way). A lot of people who don't care much support comprehensive reform. Of the uber-motivated, many support Tancredo.

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Correct.

It never ceases to amaze me how many diluted Tancredo supporters there are that think their position is mainstream because the public is against "Amnesty," which, of course, means very different things to different people.

"I ain't never votin' fo another Democrat so long as I can draw breath! I'll vote for a dog first!" - Leola Thomas

from RealClearPolitics....and it includes the 25% that were in favor of amnesty...I think you and a lot of people remember that battle a little differently than those of us who spent May, June and July calling, writing and faxing our Senators and Congressmen on a daily basis and going to their office once a week....there was a full onslaught of both Republicans and Democrats on these members of congress....

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/the_revolt_on_illegal_...

and a little polling information from Rasmussen in June of 07

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/i...

Freedom of Religion not Freedom from Religion

And the 1876 election is widely viewed by historians as having been stolen!

...that the Republicans held the White House for 3 straight terms. And, had it not been for Watergate, that streak may well have gone 6 straight terms. The last time the Democrats held the White House for 3 straight terms was back in the FDR/Truman era.

Look, GWB is profoundly unpopular. I'm not saying he deserves that unpopularity. But, to quote El Rushbo, it is what it is. And there's simply no question that his unpopularity is rubbing off on his party.

We have paid, and will continue paying, a price for him. That's all I'm saying.

Any conservative who says that he can't vote for McCain just hasn't really taken a close enough look. While it's obvious that McCain's been drifting left for the past decade or so, he's still worlds better than the other two alternatives.

All that said, and all the current polling notwithstanding, I'm still predicting a Democrat sweep this November. I think they'll pick up 2-5 Senate seats, 15-20 House seats, and the White House.

And I think, given the incompetency and incoherence of the Reid-Pelosi Congress, the dislike of Hillary Clinton, and the Trojan Horse that is Barack Obama, that says a lot about how far we've fallen in the past few years. The Republican Party is in desperate need of a renaissance of leadership -- and John McCain is not the man to provide it.

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Here's some context, in Table 1. My own take is that, while going up is always better than going down, the Pew numbers are pretty close to the norm in recent history, and so nothing to worry about too much.

I'd start to worry, though, if things started to go south from the figures in Table 3, which measures the conservative-moderate-liberal ratio. But from what I've seen in more recent polls, things are pretty stable on that front—with maybe a little uptick in the liberal numbers, but seemingly at the expense of moderates who probably weren't going to vote GOP anyhow: the numbers for conservatives seem as strong as ever. Basically, this seems to be the same electoral landscape we've been seeing for the last couple of decades.

Of course, all this is Harris as opposed to Pew, but the numbers for the years they overlap look pretty close.

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