Exit poll survey confirms partisan shift (interesting numbers here)

AP via Yahoo! ^ | 11/08/08 | MIKE MOKRZYCKI and CORALIE CARLSON

[DemforBush]

The 2008 presidential election saw the biggest partisan shift in a generation — more of a rejection of Republicans than an embrace of Democrats — but voter surveys find no broad ideological realignment behind that shift...

[DemforBush]

Didn't see this in search.

Food for thought here - Party identification shifted toward Democrats this time, but the percentages of people considering themselves liberal, moderate, or conservative are essentially unchanged since 2004 and before.

Rather interesting data in the wake of the "IT'S A NEW ERA FOR PROGRESSIVISM! CONSERVATISM IS DEAD!!1!" ranting we've been getting from Krugman and his ilk.

[SolidWood]

Most Americans (just as most other people) act on a whim, don't see past the next three months and are easily swayed by superficialities. It's the sad truth.

Folks calling themselves progressive or conservative have no problem with jumping back and front and vote this time for D, next time for R and sometimes for nothing at all.

[Darkwolf377]

Not enough people had a reason to vote for McCain.

I may be wrong, but that's how I see the results. We didn't lose by 10-20%. We lost by 5%, while holding 46% with a weak, mushy-middle candidate.

If we had a solid conservative who could define conservative values and why we must return to them after the complete and total failure of "compassionate conservatism," we could have pulled this off.

So we certainly don't have to completely alter our positions. Ironically, we have to do what Bush failed to do for 8 years--communicate our positions and actually LIVE (politically speaking) those beliefs.

That's all there is to it. No more Bushes or McCain-ish "moderates". Solid conservatives who can communicate why being such is a good thing--that's what we need.

[trumandogz]

Democrats made up 39 percent of the electorate and Republicans 32 percent in a national exit poll...

And that is why Democrats were Over-Sampled in all of those pre election polls.

[trumandogz]

We are done with Bushes, McCains and Doles!

The Bush and Doles had someone in High Office in Washington from 1953 to 2009.

And a Bush or Dole as of the GOP Ticket for every presidential election from 1976 to 2004.

It is time to move on.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Not enough people had a reason to vote for McCain.

A middle-of-the-road Gen-Xer of my acquaintance saw McCain as not much different from Obama on the financial prudence side of things (they’d both just voted for the bailout), and he’s uncomfortable with the social conservative side of the Republican Party. He ended up voting for Obama, but with a true financial conservative candidate, he’d have voted Republican.

[Darkwolf377]

with a true financial conservative candidate, he’d have voted Republican.

McCain and Bush are like so many Republicans--they don't have the cojones to BE conservative.

If McCain were a true fiscal conservative, he would have won. I think people honestly believe that Obama has some kind of plan, because he ACTS like someone with a plan. He's the dems' Nixon.

[backhoe]

He's the dems' Nixon.

Yep.

[sirchtruth]

No more Bushes or McCain-ish "moderates". Solid conservatives who can communicate why being such is a good thing--that's what we need.

I think it's pretty safe to say everyone here agrees with this accessment. The real question is what do WE do?

We have to wrest control from the moderates, completely and totally by winning all the 'primaries.' Vote any and all rino's out no matter whose running against them. If there's no canidate then make one. The local school janitor will do if they're conservative!

[Leisler]

A real, liberal, Democrat, beats a liberal, fake Republican every time.

[Madeleine Ward]

As I said in another thread, many conservatives are registered Republicans when in reality, they don’t consider THAT party as representing them. So, the stats that say Repubs stayed home is pretty meaningless.

I think the poll they SHOULD take is the ideological one and find out how many conservatives sat it out, regardless of how they are registered.

If any of you heard Rush on Greta last night, he corrected himself when he talked about his political affiliation being Republican: he described himself as a conservative and not a Republican.

[LS]

In OH, McCain got 1/2 million fewer votes than Bush. Obama got fewer votes than Kerry. Republicans to some degree stayed home, despite what appeared to be at the outset a record-breaking “red” turnout.

[John D]

Not enough people had a reason to vote for McCain.

Except for Palin he didn't give anybody ANY reason to vote for him.

[mlocher]

... voter surveys find no broad ideological realignment behind that shift...

This is the part of the story that baffles me the most. We still are right of center, but voted to the left this election.

[John D]

We still are right of center, but voted to the left this election.

We did not vote left this election. The leftists did. The conservatives just did not vote because there was no conservative running. There was only a liberal running against a socialist.

[mlocher]

We did not vote left this election. The leftists did. The conservatives just did not vote because there was no conservative running. There was only a liberal running against a socialist.

I agree that the choices were not very good and that many conservatives chose to sit out the election. However, the independents and RINOs put Obama in office. Many of these "centrists" voted against their values.

[fr_freak]

Everything you need to know about the state of our voting public can be summed up with this little anecdote of mine: I know a woman who is in her late thirties who voted for Obama because McCain just "seemed like one of those grumpy old guys". But that is not the worst part. I once asked this woman a few questions to test her knowledge of history (this was way before the election). She could not even name the decade in which World War II took place. Imagine how warped your world view would be, and how vulnerable you would be to the lies that are spewed non-stop these days, if you lacked even the most basic knowledge of history. These are our voters today.

If and when we have our CWII, we'll need to have another constitutional convention, and one of the things we have to implement is restriction of the franchise. The Founding Fathers were wise enough to limit it originally to male landowners, in order to avoid the situation where the incompetent and/or parasitic could use the vote to steal from the productive. We thought we were more enlightened than they were when we opened the vote to everyone, but were wrong. Mob rule is the worst form of government.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[neverdem]

We did not vote left this election. The leftists did. The conservatives just did not vote because there was no conservative running.

From the story:

Democrats made up 39 percent of the electorate and Republicans 32 percent in a national exit poll for The Associated Press and television networks.

But there was virtually no change in the ideological spectrum: This year 22 percent called themselves liberal, compared with 21 percent in 2004; 44 percent moderate, compared with 45 percent; and 34 percent conservative, same as four years ago.

IMHO, moderates and independents voted left. Some pubbies stayed home, but it was mostly moderates and independents that shifted.

[Cacique]

bump for later