Electoral Maps

[cubanpab]

Posted: 10/28/08 at 3:54pm

I've been looking at electoral maps of years past and I'm amazed at how different they used to look up until Clinton. From 72 - 92 (with the exception of Carter) every election was a major landslide.

I wonder what happened after Clinton to make everyone so divided?

[RadiGal2]

Posted: 10/28/08 at 4:37pm

All the journal articles and studies I have read indicate that the DLC philosophy of 'Triangulation' which moved the base wildly to the center decreased Democratic enthusiasm and lowered turnout. That combined with the Rove Doctrine of tapping into the fundamentalist Christian right -- which largely had stopped voting after the Scopes trial in 1925 but of course re-emerged big-time in both 2000 and 2004.

Every statical indicator points to the fact that more stark the contrast of ideology the larger the turnout and the bigger the landslide. Thus when Clinton ran as a 'welfare reforming moderate' which Al Gore did very little to alter the perception of and Bush a 'compassionate populist conservative' the result was this sort of fractured (dare I say 'polarized') electorate, because both sides were(perceived to be) far more centrist which causes the 'lesser of two evils' or there's no difference between them anyway' syndrome.

That most certainly is not the case this year and will make watching the results come in really interesting.