http://www.electoral-vote.com is a fine place to keep up to date on that. The proprietor uploads *every * new statewide poll into the totals. BTW, “If the election were held today” yada yada it shows Kerry 322, Bush.
“Not in the hillbilly South”, you say? That site shows that Kerry is only 2 points down in Arkansas, and tied in Tennessee. That reflects the “Edwards bounce”, sure, and its extent and duration are yet to be seen (despite the fact that any “Cheney bounce” will likely be negative), but it still shows the Solid South is not at all solidly red.
Make that Kerry 322, Bush 205, 1 state tied. It will probably change before you read this, anyway.
The true believers are not persuadable, of course, but how much of the evangelical Christian community is that committed? It may be that many of them, while refusing to vote for a pro-choicer or a Catholic, will be so alienated by Bush’s war of aggression and economic recklessness that they’ll just stay home. That used to be their pattern, not long ago, and during the Clinton years it started to reassert itself. Recall Paul Weyrich’s despairing exhortation, after the 1996 election, to social conservatives to simply withdraw from a society which both scorned and outnumbered them?
[Comic Book Guy voice]One would think so, but no.[/CBGv]
Here’s a data point. This morning, I sent a religious-right friend & coworker a link to the article Ten Reasons to Fire George W. Bush. He replied that, sadly, he agrees with nine of those ten reasons. However, he then noted that Kerry would be “100% worse.”
I think it’s inevitable that lower enthusiasm translates into lower turnout; the only question is, by how much? But it could be enough to tip the balance in, say, Pennsylvania.
Yes, because we all know God’s First Law to His People is, “Thou shalt vote Republican.” :rolleyes:
I stand by my earlier assertion about religious fundamentalists and independent thinking. I would like to be pleasantly surprised, but I won’t be holding my breath.
Anecdotally speaking, my religious conservative father-in-law says he’s staying home this election year–he hates Kerry but cannot in good conscience vote for Bush. Fine with me.
I think it also shows that it’s worth taking quickie polls with a grain of salt.
electoral-vote.com is a handy site for seeing who’s done the latest poll for each state, and what it said. But putting them together can be iffy, and I’m a big one for seeing what multiple polls have to say about a state over time, if possible, to make sense of the numbers. And if it’s not possible, then to exercise some skepticism and common sense.
For instance, in the wake of choosing Edwards as his veep, there’s no way Kerry’s doing worse in NC than in every Southern state except Texas and Mississippi. There’s no way he’s abruptly sunk to 15 points back in NC, while simultaneously surging to a tie in TN. I don’t know what’s happened, but I’m damned sure it isn’t that. Yet the commentary at electoral-vote.com takes the poll results at face value. That’s a big mistake. Use the site as a tool, but with care.
Oh, certainly. I also have issues with the site using polls with, shall we say, “problematic” methodologies (Rasmussen, Zogby) on an equal basis with the more conventional ones. But it’s the only national-total site I know of (hint, hint, Dopers), and even the quickie polls aren’t usually that far off. If one shows AR and TN in Kerry’s reach, that may well be the case.
What can I say Shodan. You think I’ll hate Bush’s policies no matter what he does, and you’ve apparently accepted a standard where he cannot possibly do wrong or underperform, almost by definition.
I consider myself a “religious conservative” and I voted for Bush in 2000 but I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do this time. I may end up voting for him again but I wouldn’t consider myself solidly in his camp. If Kerry can convince me that he is more moderate and not quite as liberal as I think he is, I could be swayed.
Here’s the thing - on some big cultural issues such as same-sex marriages and abortion, I’m with Bush. I also support, in theory, faith-based social programs. And I can’t ignore the importance of Supreme Court nominations for those issues. Like someone asked earlier, I’d rather have Bush making those appointments than Kerry.
On the other hand, I’m very disturbed by Bush’s embracing of captial punishment. I’m infuriated that he keeps cutting taxes (mostly for businesses and the wealthy) while the federal deficit skyrockets. And, though I’m okay with most post 9/11 security developments, I believed the war in Iraq to be totally unjustifiable and completely self-serving.
So… if Kerry can convince me, just a little bit, that his views on social policy lean moderate – or at least if he can convince me that he will nominate moderate judges and not liberal activists – I’d be eager to have an alternative to vote for.
The reality I think most social conservatives have to get over is the fact that abortion and same-sex marriage aren’t going to change much irregardless of who they vote for on a federal level. As we’ve just seen, Bush can’t even manage to get a FMA to pass even controlling both houses of Congress: even at the high watermark.
And further, you have to consider their sincerity in the first place. The FMA showed every hallmark of an attempt not to seriously pass legislation, but merely to fuck with Kerry and Edward’s schedule and try and get an issue with which to hammer them. i.e. it was about helping Bush’s chances in November, not about gay marriage.
Same with abortion. If the Republicans and Bush really cared about the issue, we could have had a ban on, at the very least, all third trimester abortions. End of story. Instead, they refused the “except for the health of the mother” clause: one that even most pro-life people find acceptable. The result was, as everyone knew, that the bill would get struck down. So, yet again, it did NOTHING to change abortion, but it sure gave Republicans something to crow about and keep the controversy in the news! Or Bush’s executive refusal to fund family planning centers abroad that offer abortions. But because the majority of what these programs do is family planning and contraceptive use, the net result is almost certainly more unwanted children and more abortions overall. Again: sounds like a strong stand against abortion, but as an anti-abortion policy, it’s not clear that it makes a lot of sense. The sound is what matters.
Democrats are the same way with guns (though not recently, since they’ve been out of power). Lots of talk, because it benefits them with their base, but nothing doing, because it would hurt them too much to actually try to ban handguns or something crazy like that.
If Kerry wins the election, any judicial nominees he puts forward will have to pass through the wringers of both the Senate and the House. Since at least one of those two institutions (if not both) will remain in Republican control after the elections, there’s no way on Earth Kerry could get a “liberal activist” through the process, and therefore no advantage for him to even attempt to nominate such a beastie.
Or, in other words, there’s no way Kerry can do the worst thing you can imagine, since he’ll still be stymed by a Republican Congress somewhere down the line.
Actually, judicial nominees (like all other federal civil and military officers requiring congressional approval) need only receive the consent of the Senate, and not the House. Still, under Senate rules, any nominee (or legislation) can be effectively blocked unless 60 Senators will vote to break a filibuster (i.e. force a vote). That means, even if the Senate switches to Democratic control, it is overwhelmingly likely that enough Republicans will be there to block the most objectionable judicial nominees (the same way the Democrats are blocking some of Bush’s nominees despite having a minority position).
I stand corrected. Still, the bottom line stands: a hypothetical Kerry Presidency has about as much chance of shoving far-left judges into the courts as George W. Bush has of debating Stephen Hawking on advanced subatomic physics.