American Thinker: Discouraged Democrat Voters May Mean Historic Sweep for GOP

[Patricia M. McBride]

Certainly very interesting when you look at some of the facts involved.  Let us hope they are right as another 4 years of these folks will be the death knell for our country.

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May 15, 2012

By Bruce Walker

Most  polls, Rasmussen  excepted, continue to show that neither presidential candidate is pulling  away from the other and that close Senate races have shifting leads.   Primary elections, however, are showing a very different situation -- and it is  voters who turn out in elections, not random Americans called by pollsters, who  determine the winners and losers in politics.  If the latest news can be  believed -- and we have every reason to believe it -- there is a conservative  voting trend building, and its momentum is going to make it truly terrifying for  liberals come November.

Let's  start at the beginning.  In the first place, Rasmussen, which polls likely  voters, has shown for years now that a huge chunk of Americans "strongly  disapprove" of the job Obama is doing.  On May 10, for example, more  than twice as many Americans strongly disapproved of Obama's job performance  as "strongly approve" of the job he is doing.

Gallup in  March showed an enthusiasm-gap edge that Republicans had over Democrats of  53% to 45%.  This is particularly important because Rasmussen, on a  month-by-month poll, shows consistently that more  Americans call themselves Republican than Democrat.  More troubling for  Obama is that Gallup  recently published a poll which showed that his strongest age group of support  -- voters 18 to 29 -- strongly favor Obama over Romney, but only 56% say that  they will definitely vote.  Meanwhile, the older voters -- especially  voters 65 and older -- strongly tilt towards Romney, and 86% of these voters say  that they will vote.

Then  there's the proof in the primary pudding.  Two months ago in Oklahoma, Obama  lost 15 counties to a protest candidate with no chance of winning.  How  many of these unhappy Democrats will stay home in November?  Oklahoma (and  West Virginia, but more on that later) is a conservative state which has  historically been run by Democrats, but unenthused Democrat voters are appearing  in other states as well.

The  April 24 Pennsylvania primary took place 17 days after Fox  News declared that the Republican presidential race was over.  Yet the  Republican candidates for the presidential election received about 800,000 votes  to 700,000 for Obama.  Democrats had the only close race in that primary,  for state attorney general, yet out of  the six different statewide races, more  votes were cast for Republicans than Democrats in every race except that  race.

Two  weeks later, in the Wisconsin recall primary, Democrats alone had competitive  primaries.  These races included not just the primary to decide who would  face Governor Walker in the June recall election, but also several state senate  primaries in which Democrats were running against other Democrats.  Yet  Governor Walker received almost  as many votes as all the Democrats running in the gubernatorial primary put  together -- the highest  number of votes that any Wisconsin governor has received in any primary in  the last sixty years.  The only reason Republicans had for voting in this  primary at all was to cast a symbolic vote for Walker, while some Wisconsin  Democrats had a couple of races -- gubernatorial nominee and state senate  nominee -- to cast ballots which meant something.  Yet Democrats, not  Republicans, seemed to stay home.

North  Carolina primary results noted that the gay marriage issue got walloped, but  that issue ought to have turned out voters on both sides in roughly equal  numbers.  Both parties had large turnouts for other races, but Obama  received only 750,000 votes in the presidential primary, with 200,000  Democrats voting no preference despite the fact that there was no Democrat  -- not even a convicted felon in another state -- to vote for in the  primary.  The Republican nomination was already sewn up as well, but the  four Republican candidates received 915,000 votes, with only 50,000 voting no  preference.

Finally,  there's the singular and eye-opening example of West Virginia.  When a  sitting president whose re-nomination is presumed a foregone conclusion  struggles in primaries, that is a profoundly bad sign for his party.  In  1912 and in 1976, when Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan sought to grab the  Republican nomination from incumbent Republican presidents, the challengers were  very popular men who were fabulous campaigners.

Keith  Judd, a convicted felon imprisoned in Texas, however, had no money or positive name recognition, and he did not campaign  at all against Obama.  So how did Federal Inmate 11539-051 get 41%  of the vote running against Obama in a state in which both senators, both  state legislative chambers, and the governor are all  Democrats?

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/discouraged_democrat_voters_...