I truly believe this will be the real story of this election, and why either man may win big (but most probably Kerry)

 

The Vanishing Nonvoter
Has Karl Rove brought too many new people to politics?
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Saturday, Oct. 30, 2004, at 10:34 PM PT

FORT LAUDERDALE—Republicans love to criticize Democrats for failing to use "dynamic scoring" when assessing the impact of tax cuts on budget revenues. But if President Bush loses the 2004 presidential election, it may be because Karl Rove failed to use dynamic scoring when assessing the impact of his political strategy on the electorate.

In budgetary matters, dynamic scoring means including the effect that cutting taxes will have on economic growth when determining how a tax cut will affect federal revenues. A static analysis, on the other hand, would just decrease the government's inflows by the amount that taxes were cut (or increase revenues by the amount taxes were raised), without calculating the ways a change in tax policy can change people's economic decisions.

For the 2004 election, Rove's static political analysis was that appealing to the 4 million evangelicals who didn't vote in 2000 would bring President Bush a decisive re-election victory. Bush's campaign—and his presidency—have appealed almost entirely to the base of the Republican Party. In a static world, that strategy makes sense: Consolidate the support you received last time, and then find new conservative voters who weren't motivated to turn out four years ago, whether because of the late-breaking news of Bush's DUI arrest or because they weren't convinced of Bush's conservative bona fides. But Rove may have missed the dynamic analysis: the effect that such a strategy would have on the rest of the nonvoting public.

In most states, the Democratic voter registration program has outpaced the Republican one. Here in Florida, that hasn't been the case, as the GOP has turned up more new registrants across the state than the Democrats. But evidence that Rove's unconventional strategy inflamed the Democratic base can be seen in the early-voting turnout, which seems to be favoring the Democrats. Friday's South Florida Sun-Sentinel featured this headline on the front page: "Early Vote Turnout Boosts Democrats." Calling the turnout in heavily Democratic Broward County a "bad sign for President Bush's chances to win the state," the Sun-Sentinel noted that "twice as many Democrats as Republicans had either voted at early voting sites or returned absentee ballots in the county." In Miami-Dade, another heavily Democratic county, Kerry stands to beat Bush by 90,000 votes if a Miami Herald poll conducted by John Zogby is accurate, Herald columnist Jim DeFede wrote on Thursday. Al Gore won the county by less than 40,000 votes.

"By our count, John Kerry already has a significant lead with the people who have already voted in Florida," Tad Devine said in a conference call with reporters Saturday. The voters who are waiting in line for 2 1/2 hours to vote—almost exactly how long the line was Saturday at the downtown Fort Lauderdale public library—aren't doing that to register their support for "more of the same," he said. Interestingly, Devine sounded more confident about Kerry's chances in Florida than in Ohio, a state in which most people think Kerry has a slight edge. He said that Kerry had a "small but important advantage" in Florida (as well as Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania), but only that the race was "very close" with Kerry "positioned to win" in Ohio, putting that the Buckeye State in the same category as Bush-leaning (by most accounts) states Iowa, Nevada, and New Mexico.

It's possible that Rove and the Bush campaign have turned up a huge trove of conservative nonvoters who were registered to vote four years ago, and who therefore aren't showing up in the numbers of new registered voters. Unless that's true, however, the early indications are that Rove's repudiation of centrist politics will backfire. The secret of Bill Clinton's campaigns and of George W. Bush's election in 2000 was the much-maligned politics of small differences: Find the smallest possible majority (well, of electoral votes, for both men) that gets you to the White House. In political science, something called the "median voter theorem" dictates that in a two-party system, both parties will rush to the center looking for that lone voter—the median voter—who has 50.1 percent of the public to the right (or left) of him. Win that person's vote, and you've won the election.

Rove has tried to use the Bush campaign to disprove the politics of the median voter. It was as big a gamble as any of the big bets President Bush has placed over the past four years. It has the potential to pay off spectacularly. After all, everyone always talks about how there are as many people who don't vote in this country as people who do vote. Rove decided to try to get the president to excite those people. Whether Bush wins or loses, it looks like he succeeded.

Chris Suellentrop is Slate's deputy Washington bureau chief. You can e-mail him at suellentrop@slate.com
12:19:55 AM    

Polling Open Thread. Kos has summarized the tracking polls in the previous thread. I will update tomorrow as Zogby becomes available. Battleground and state polls are being released in flurries. Here are some local polls of note: New Hampshire Concord Monitor Kerry 49 (49) Bush 46 (45) Bush approve/disapprove 46/47 Iowa Des Moines Register Kerry 48 (45) Bush 45 (46) Bush approve/disapprove 45/47 Kerry leads early voters 52-41 Minnesota Star Tribune Minnesota Poll Kerry 49 (48) Bush 41 (43) Bush approve/disapprove 44/49 In addition to the local polls are the national ones, including Zogby. A Mason-Dixon poll battleground 15 state round-up can be found here at MyDD. Jerome also has encouraging VA and NV data from SUSA. For example, NV is 50-44 Bush in the M-D but 49-49 SUSA. As always, concentrate on Bush's numbers... and try to look at more than one poll if you can. Use the polling collection sites like 2.004.k to help you sort them out. More on OBL here: The Democracy Corps has a new poll, conducted Friday night and Saturday morning. While the full survey will be completed on Sunday, the half-sample of 500 interviews conducted after the release of the Bin Laden tape, show the race unchanged compared to a survey completed Thursday night. The partial survey shows Kerry at 48 percent and Bush at 47 percent. Like the survey conducted before, it shows the two parties with equal numbers of party identifiers. The Saturday respondents (250 interviews) were asked the following question: "I'm going to read you a pair of statements about the release of Bin Laden's videotape. Please tell me which one comes closer to your view. -- It makes me think that George Bush took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan and diverted resources to Iraq. -- It underscores the importance of George Bush's approach to the war on terrorism. By 10 points (46 to 36 percent), voters were more likely to think that Bush took his eye off the ball. (These results will be updated when the full survey is completed on Sunday.) We're in the home stretch. We'll all need to come up for air on Wednesday. In the meantime, you can always come here for a kindred spirit to share a tale with. Let me add my thanks to Kos as well for making it all happen. [Daily Kos]
12:05:34 AM