DEMOGRAPHICS IS DESTINY

Unfortunately it appears to only be available as a pdf, but there's an interesting essay in the current Political Science Quarterly that crunches the numbers on the 2002 midterm election: Terror, Terrain, and Turnout: Explaining the 2002 Midterm Elections (GARY C. JACOBSON, Spring 2003, Political Science Quarterly). The author concludes that the GOP victory was less surprising and less significant than it seemed, but that long term trends will make it very difficult for Democrats to recapture even the House in this decade. One number that leaps out: George W. Bush carried 30 states, Al Gore just twenty, which would seem to make a 60-40 split in the Senate realistic. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2003 06:05 PM