Tagged: The Party Line

In the previous post, I compared the past two presidential elections against one another in a variety of different areas, most notably in the composition of voters casting ballots in North Carolina. 

Registered Democrats saw a significant increase (364,735) in their ballot numbers between 2004 and 2008, rising 22 percent, while registered Republicans saw a 9 percent increase in their voters casting ballots (120,896).

There are different ways of looking at the possible electorate, based on past presidential elections. For example, North Carolina’s electorate might be reflective of the composition of registered voters in the state.

So let’s start with the 2004 election, when George W. Bush won the state by 13 percent—and was a continuation of what North Carolina had traditionally voted at the presidential level. As was evident in previous elections, North Carolina was a state where the Republicans won by double-digits over a series of elections, and was classified as “safe” GOP state.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right? There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement, and that government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49 -- he starts off with a huge number.

When the United States was in the midst of World War I, U.S. Sen. Hiram W. Johnson, an isolationist from California, is credited with coining the phrase “the first casualty when war comes is truth.”  So it seems the same could be said for this year’s political campaigns.

This year’s campaign seems to be taking the “cut and paste” approach by both sides, and highlighting a minute piece of what a candidate says and creating a firestorm out of a dust-up. 

Before the convention, we heard a lot about the lack of Democratic enthusiasm among the electorate, but the delegates in the arena were not having any of that. It was obvious from the beginning, with Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker’s platform address, that the attendees started at a high energy level.