Don't take us for granted

A feature story in today's Los Angeles Times highlights Douglas County in describing how unaffiliated and even Republican votes can't be taken for granted in the coming presidential election. LA Times reporter Peter Wallsten, who spent several days in the Denver suburbs the week before last and spoke with several of us, noted the change that's in the wind.

Here in Douglas County, the state's Democratic governor won nearly 50% of the vote last year -- a major achievement, considering that fewer than one in five voters here are Democrats and that President Bush had won overwhelmingly in 2000 and 2004.

After describing how Republican strategists had until recently counted on the support of emerging suburbs such as ours, the article describes what we have been seeing every day.

But talk today to Donna Howe, 49, a [Highlands Ranch] mother of two who backed Bush in 2004, and a dramatic setback to that plan emerges.

Like many of her neighbors, Howe is an independent voter who is frustrated by the direction of the country, nervous about national security -- and open to a Democratic candidate "with good ideas on healthcare and a reasonable plan to deal with the Iraq war."

The same holds for Jim Tuccio, 44, who lives a few streets away and blames Republican mismanagement of the economy for strangling the mortgage company he once worked for, costing him his job.

And it's not just the unaffiliated voters who are looking our way. Quoting a leader in an Arvada megachurch:

"I'm still a Republican, but I'm very close to being an independent," said Phil Waters. "I'm closer to the middle than I used to be because of the way the Republicans have screwed things up."

And public opinion research also explains why we should expect a good year for the Democratic Party in 2008.

Surveys by Pew have found that far fewer voters now identify with the Republican Party. Where the two parties had roughly an equal hold on the electorate in 2002, now only about 35% call themselves Republicans or independents leaning toward the GOP, compared with about 50% aligning with the Democrats.

Moreover, independent voters are shifting their outlook on government, Pew found, putting them more in line with the Democratic Party in their concern about income inequality and belief in a government safety net for the poor.

Even some of the GOP's most ardent backers -- supporters whom Bush's campaign courted heavily in 2004 -- are less enthusiastic about the party, among them Latinos and women in suburbs and exurbs.

I expect we'll see more of the national media here in the next 14 months. The political climate is changing, and we're at the center of it.

Comments

[Gwen]

By and large (with a few minor exceptions here and there) those candidates who even profess to want independents' votes (after all we can vote in primaries in 30 states), want them without acknowledging that we (about 40% of the electorate now) are independents for a reason - we don't like partisanism and we're not happy with how politics have been going. We may differ on our viewpoints, but we're hardly indecisive swing voters as the major party political pundits would like us to believe. For more on the independent movement (and to take the 2008 Presidential Survey), go to www.independentvoting.org.

Gwen