One of the perks of being in person at an event like the Big Tent and the DNC Convention in general is getting access to some really cool events you can't get to anywhere else.  No, I'm not talking about the after-parties; those actually tend to be fairly lame, imho.  I'm talking about the really informative morning and afternoon sessions where activists have the opportunity to learn things you can't get elsewhere.

Today, the New Leaders Council (not in any way affiliated with the odious DLC) put together a lunch meeting where a pollster from DemocracyCorps (Greenberg) presented for the first time their latest Mountain West polling data, just made available here on their site (PDF only).  It's an awesome wealth of material that confirms what most of us DFH bloggers have been saying for a long time: Obama is our best candidate with great coattails; there is no "Hispanic" problem; the best way to win swing voters is to play to progressive strengths; and John McCain has a serious uphill road to hew in the Mountain West.

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Back in December 2004, while a lot of people were trying to learn the lessons from John Kerry's loss so that the Democrats would not have to endure another marginal but decisive defeat, I remember stumbling on an interesting theory that ran counter to the common wisdom of the time (i.e. that the Democrats needed to do better among "faith" voters, whatever that meant, and that the party had to rebuild in the South).

The vision being put forward by an important group of progressives and Democrats, including Gary Hart in an interview I conducted with him that month and David Sirota in an article for Washington Monthly, was that the Democrats' future lay more in the West than the South, as traditionally more libertarian voters found themselves increasingly alienated by Republican policies. To illustrate this trend, folks noted that it would have actually taken fewer votes spread across Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada to secure Kerry the presidency than it would have in Ohio alone, and that Democrats actually made serious gains in 2004 in Mountain West states like Montana and Colorado.

Indeed the Democrats did eventually realize more strong gains in the region in 2006, picking up a governorship in Colorado, a Senate seat in Montana, House seats in Arizona and Colorado, and several state legislative races. And an article in The Washington Post Sunday by Karl Vick seems to indicate that the Democrats may have an opportunity to once again build upon their gains int he region as a result of the unpopular policies of the Bush administration.

The Bush administration's aggressive drive to promote oil and gas drilling on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains has sparked growing anger here among traditional Republican constituents who say that the stepped-up push for energy development is sullying some of the country's most majestic landscape.

The emerging backlash from ranchers and sportsmen, which is occurring despite an economic boom driven by drilling, is threatening GOP primacy in at least one corner of what has been a solidly Republican West. Long the most reliably conservative expanse of a state that has gone red in six of the past seven presidential contests, Colorado's western third shows evidence of the "purpling" that has made Colorado look increasingly like a swing state.

Support from the western slope was seen as pivotal in the elections of Democrats Bill Ritter as governor last year and Sen. Ken Salazar in 2004, the same year Salazar's older brother, Rep. John Salazar, was elected to Congress from a western Colorado district that had given 66 percent of its vote to the Republican candidate four years earlier. All three Democrats found support in GOP enclaves while calling for "balance" in energy extraction.

[...]

Ritter's campaign improved the Democratic return in five western slope counties by 14 to 46 percentage points over the past cycle. In his standard stump speech, he noted complaints about air quality in majestic Glenwood Canyon. He carried Garfield County, which houses the canyon, with 57 percent of the vote, compared with 33 percent for the previous Democratic candidate for governor.

Not all of the swing toward the Democrats is the result of anger over the Bush administration's stance on drilling. Other factors, such as candidate appeal and the Iraq war, weigh heavily. But politicians on the western slope say drilling is a major local issue.

This story is important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, one of the Democrats' best Senate pickup opportunities this cycle comes in Colorado, where far right Republican Wayne Allard is retiring and Democratic Congressman Mark Udall is favored, though perhaps just slightly, to defeat former Republican Congressman Bob Schaffer in this open seat contest.

But what's more, as alluded to above, even a relatively small shift of about 100,000 votes in the Mountain West could swing three states into the Democrats' hands in 2008, and even Arizona, which tends to vote Republican but which reelected its popular Democratic Governor by a wide margin in 2006, could potentially be competitive given the right set of circumstances.

And the great thing about this situation is that the Democrats do not have to sell out their beliefs in order to profit from Republican mistakes. Far from it, in fact. It is precisely because Democrats are committed to conservation while Republicans have pursued policies forwarded by the energy industry that would fundamentally alter the environment in adverse ways that a lot of these hunters and fisherman and outdoorsmen have been considering supporting Democratic candidates for the first time in decades -- or perhaps even in their entire lives.

This of course isn't to say that the Democrats should only be talking about issues of extraction and conservation in the Mountain West. As suggested in the article, Iraq still looms extremely large in the region, as it does in the rest of the country, and so the Democrats would not be well served by ignoring the issue while campaigning in the region. That said, there's no reason not to speak to the issues of particular importance to a given region while campaigning in that region. So it would be in the Democrats best interest to continue to hammer home on conservation in states like Colorado and Nevada throught the 2008 cycle and beyond.

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I have been a strong advocate for the Democratic Party's western strategy for some time, both because the Democrats performed relatively better in the region in 2004 than they did elsewhere and because the issues facing the region, like conservation and dealing with growth, might make voters in the region more amenable to Democrats than Republicans. Indeed, Democrats across the Mountain West performed well in 2006, with Democrats being elected or reelected governor in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming; Democrats picking up congressional seats in Arizona and Colrado; Democrats winning a close Senate race in Montana; and Democrats increasing their share of state legislative seats throughout the region, as well.

But for as well as the Democrats did in 2006 by those metrics, new polling indicates that the Mountain West might not be quite as ready to swing Democratic as many, including myself, had thought. Taking a look at the new survey from the Cook Political Report and RT Strategies some interesting points jump out. Among registered voters around the country, Democrats hold a striking 16-point lead -- 52 percent to 36 percent -- on the generic congressional ballot question. Breaking down that number region by region, the numbers work out as follows:

Interestingly, the Democrats actually perform better in the South than they do the West. Certainly the difference is within the margin of error. But at the same time, according to the poll, the only region of the country in which the Democrats do not receive a majority on the generic congressional ballot question is in the West. But the story does not end there. Taking an even deeper look into the crosstabs of the poll at the internals of the West, some very important questions come up about the potential for Democratic Party performance in the region.

I must note as clearly as possible that the margin of error for these subsamples is very high, particularly for the Mountain West, which only had 78 respondents. As such, a large grain of salt must be taken before reading too much into these numbers. Still, it's worth noting that, at least according to this poll, Republicans perform their best in the Mountain West while the Democrats perform their worst in the region. These numbers, in fact, are much worse than they are for the Democrats in the South or even in the "Farm Belt" where the Democrats maintain a 42 percent to 36 percent lead (though, again, with a very high margin of error with just 76 respondents).

Certainly we should not fret too much over numbers that come with such a high margin of error. What's more, I'm not, by any means, advocating that the Democrats give up on the strategy of focusing on the Mountain West in favor of, say, going back and trying to win back the South in 2008. That said, these numbers should at least throw a splash of cold water on to those who believe that the Democrats are bound to win in the Mountain West in 2008, both because of the trend in the region and because of the party's focus there (with the Nevada caucuses and the party's 2008 convention being held in Denver), and cause folks on this side of the aisle to redouble their efforts and outreach in states across the region.

In 2004 some of the greatest signs of life in the Democratic Party came out of the Mountain West. This year, it appears this trend is spreading, with Democrats having a potential to pick up as many as twelve U.S. House seats (AZ-01, AZ-05, AZ-08, CO-04, CO-05, CO-07, ID-01, MT-AL, NM-01, NV-02, NV-03, and WY-AL), three Senate seats (AZ, MT and NV), and two governorships (CO and ID). Among these states, Idaho, which George W. Bush carried with over 68 percent of the vote in 2004, stands out in particular, especially given the latest Mason-Dixon polling out of the state.

In the governor's race, Republican U.S. Rep. Butch Otter leads Democratic newspaper owner Jerry Brady by a single percentage point. Republican state Rep. Bill Sali has a 2 percentage point lead over Democratic businessman Larry Grant for the congressional seat that runs from West Boise north to Canada. In the race to oversee public schools, Democrat Jana Jones leads Republican Tom Luna by 3 percentage points.

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Twenty-seven percent of voters say they have an unfavorable opinion of Otter; Brady's negative figure is 14 percent. Luna is viewed unfavorably by 22 percent, while only 6 percent see Jones that way. Twenty-six percent say they have an unfavorable opinion of Risch; LaRocco's figure is 16 percent.

Worst of all is Sali, who famously has been called an "absolute idiot" by Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, whose words star in Grant TV spots. Sali's unfavorable rating is 33 percent, the same proportion who see him favorably. Grant's ratio is very positive, with 34 percent viewing him favorably and 13 percent unfavorably. With voters hungry for change, those perceptions of the standard-bearers of the party in power are damaging.

Democrats also appear to have momentum. A Brady poll in July showed him trailing Otter by 19 points. Now, they're even. Jones trailed Luna 41-28 in July, and Grant has reversed early numbers showing him well behind.

I'm not going to pretend that I was prescient and saw these races, and specifically the governor's race, as being this competitive at this stage in the game. I'm also not going to get my hopes up too high in the assumption that this polling indicates that the Democrats are within a couple points of winning rather than within a couple points of catching their Republican adversaries with a significant portion of the electorate still undecided. In 2004, for example, I truly believed that Democrat Brad Carson had a great chance in the Oklahoma Senate race, with polling showing him either up by a couple points or down by a couple points but in the low 40s, only to see Republican Tom Coburn virtually walk to a 53 percent to 41 percent victory.

Nonetheless, the political climate in the country -- and even in Idaho -- is decidedly different than it was in 2004, and the late-breaking trends are not moving towards the GOP like they were just two years ago. That could change, particularly as a result of the politically-motivated decision to announce the verdict in the Saddam Hussein trial a week from today. But even keeping that in account, I'm significantly less pessimistic about Democrats' chances in states like Idaho than I was just weeks ago. And if this movement keeps up, folks inside the beltway will be shocked to see races  break towards the Democrats that they never even thought possible.

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