Alan I. Abramowitz is one of the most well respected voting behavior scholars around. So when he writes, you must read:
According to every known leading indicator, 2008 should be a very good year for Democratic candidates at all levels. There are many factors that point to an across-the-board Democratic victory in November, including the extraordinary unpopularity of President Bush, the deteriorating condition of the economy, the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, and the fact that Americans prefer the Democratic position to the Republican position on almost every major national issue. However, the most important Democratic advantage, and one that has received relatively little attention in the media, is the fact that for the past six years the Democratic electoral base has been expanding while the Republican electoral base has been shrinking.
Since 2002, according to annual data compiled by the Gallup Poll, the percentage of Americans identifying with or leaning toward the Democratic Party has increased by about seven percentage points while the percentage identifying with or leaning toward the Republican Party has decreased by about six percentage points. Fifty-two percent of Americans now identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party while only 39 percent identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.A surge in Democratic enrollment across the country has pushed the party far beyond its competitor in many of the key battleground states: There are now about 800,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania, for example. And even in states without party registration, such as Ohio and Virginia, the fact that turnout in the Democratic primary dwarfed turnout in the Republican primary suggests that a similar movement has been taking place. As a result of these gains in Democratic identification, the 2008 election could see a number of formerly red states, such as Virginia, move into the purple column, and several formerly purple states, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, move into the blue column.
The fact that Democratic identifiers now decisively outnumber Republican identifiers means that in order to win, Democrats only have to unite and turn out their own base. If Obama wins the national popular vote by even a single percentage point, it's worth remembering, he'll almost certainly win the electoral vote as well. In order for John McCain to win, on the other hand, Republicans not only have to unite and turn out their own base, which they have been fairly successful at doing in recent elections, but they also have to win a large majority of the small bloc of true independents and make significant inroads among Democratic identifiers, which they have not been very successful at doing recently.
Political commentators often assume that Democratic voters are inevitably less motivated and united than Republican voters--that they either won't turn out or, if they do turn out, they will defect in large numbers to an appealing Republican candidate like John McCain. Leaving aside the question of just how appealing John McCain will be in November after undergoing several months of withering attacks from an extremely well-funded Democratic campaign, this image of Democratic voters is badly outdated.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, it was very difficult for Democratic presidential candidates to hold their party's diverse electoral coalition together. That was because Democrats were ideologically divided and Republican presidential candidates like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan found it relatively easy to pick off conservative Democratic voters when they were running against liberal Democratic candidates like George McGovern and Walter Mondale. Since the 1970s, however, the American electorate has undergone an ideological realignment with conservative voters strongly loyal to the Republican Party and liberal voters reliably pulling the lever for the Democratic Party.
Today, there are very few conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans left either in the leadership or the electorate of the parties. The result is that national elections are fought between two ideologically cohesive parties. In this type of electorate, the party that does a better job of uniting and turning out its supporters usually wins. In 2002 and 2004, that was the Republicans, but by 2006 it was the Democrats who had the advantage. Their advantage has continued to grow in the past two years.
A big part of the reason for the growing Democratic edge in party identification is the fact that Democrats now enjoy a large advantage among voters under the age of 30, as well as among African American and Hispanic voters. All three of these groups have been turning out in record numbers in the Democratic primaries, and there is no reason to believe that they will not also turn out in large numbers in November. Based on the early indicators of voter interest, the 2008 presidential election could very well witness the highest turnout of eligible voters in the postwar era, and that can only be good news for Democrats. With a unified Democratic Party, a clear message of change, and a strong grass-roots effort at mobilizing the Democratic base, on January 20, 2009, Barack Obama will be taking office as the head of a unified Democratic government. And John McCain will still be a member of the minority party in the United States Senate.
UPDATE: NPR has a similar story today. Maybe people are starting to realize that this long primary, as annoying as it might be for us junkies, is actually quite healthy for the party over the long term.
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