Lynne's
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Voting in a Bubble
"But unlike in Oregon, the dark blue pockets in St. Louis, Cleveland and South Florida were not large enough to carry the traditional swing states of Missouri, Ohio and Florida. What worked for the Democrats in Oregon did not work nationally, leaving the party still searching for a way to expand beyond its increasingly urban base.
"The Democrats don't have to become right-wing cultural conservatives,"said Hibbitts, the pollster. "But they do have to calibrate their message on some of these values so more folks accept it.
"Exit polls showed 37 percent of voters would support civil unions, and Bush won those voters. That seems to suggest a lot of Bush supporters aren't cultural troglodytes."
The gulf between urban blue and suburban/rural red has been building for years, Hibbitts said, and Tuesday's election "was the culmination of it."
"Democrats are falling to pieces in rural areas and haven't tried to get those people," he said. "They've been more and more responsive to their core group, and this election shows that it isn't enough."
"But unlike in Oregon, the dark blue pockets in St. Louis, Cleveland and South Florida were not large enough to carry the traditional swing states of Missouri, Ohio and Florida. What worked for the Democrats in Oregon did not work nationally, leaving the party still searching for a way to expand beyond its increasingly urban base.
"The Democrats don't have to become right-wing cultural conservatives,"said Hibbitts, the pollster. "But they do have to calibrate their message on some of these values so more folks accept it.
"Exit polls showed 37 percent of voters would support civil unions, and Bush won those voters. That seems to suggest a lot of Bush supporters aren't cultural troglodytes."
The gulf between urban blue and suburban/rural red has been building for years, Hibbitts said, and Tuesday's election "was the culmination of it."
"Democrats are falling to pieces in rural areas and haven't tried to get those people," he said. "They've been more and more responsive to their core group, and this election shows that it isn't enough."
posted 10:19:00 AM
