Not as targeted as it could be -

I know it's more work to set up, but it would be more effective to focus on tight races not just every race. For people not living in districts with tight races, the message should be different: volunteer, give money, tell your friends who live in the district.

I do targeted marketing, online offline, for a living. Believe me, this would have an impact.

I just got back from my precinct caucus in Seattle and turnout for our area in north Seattle was huge.

We had 97 attendees for just my precinct alone. Our local elementary school gym hosted 6 precincts and was packed.

Obama was the overwhelming winner in this part of town, but no surprise there since this is the most progressive part of the state.

I also tried to attend Obama's rally yesterday at the basketball arena near downtown Seattle (capacity 20,000). I thought I'd left plenty of time to get there but when I arrrived, the residential streets in the area were jammed with cars looking for parking (this at 10:45 am on a Friday). I finally got into a parking garage and joined the solid mass of people walking the several blocks to the Arena. By the time I got there, supposedly 7 minutes after doors opened at 11:00 am, the Arena was already full and surrounded by thousands of people. It felt like an amazing cultural phenomena.

I've listened to the debates of the Democratic candidates lately and compared to Al Gore in Bali, they are high school kids compared to grad school.

Al Gore stands head and shoulders above them in experience, the guts to say the truth, and the commitment to push the whole world to face an extremely unpleasant and challenging problem.

Why, oh why Al are you not running for President?

I really like the idea of attacking early since it takes a lot of time to change voter perceptions about a well established elected official.

While I like the ad as a whole, I do have one important thing I would change: the announcer. It would be much more powerful if it had a Kentucky accent. Right now it sounds like an outsider's ad, not a complaint from "one of us".

(And yes, I work in advertising.)

I agree. It's very difficult to screen for primary voters this far out, and for caucus goers it's even worse.

Plus we're dealing with very small sample sizes, so a few people having a bad day, or a inaccurate screen, can swing your numbers.  Most of the changes could be random swings without statistical meaning.

Chris - You make a very good point about the squishiness of primary polling results. There are some very good comments about this on the website Pollster.com.  Basically they point out that there isn't a very good way to screen for the most likely primary voters, and it's ten times more difficult in caucus states like Iowa. So the poll results are pretty useless right now.

However, if we could find a polling company who has a solid method for identifying the most likely primary voters, we should do a poll in one or more of the first states, which will have an inordinate impact on candidate fortunes going into the big kahuna of Feb 5th.

Now is the time to start whittling away at the support for McCain and for the Republican party as a whole.  By 2008 the U.S. will have substantially gotten out of Iraq, and the Republicans will be wiping their hands of it and blaming Bush and Rumsfeld.  

McCain will be running as a "reformer" and we have got to put the stake right through the heart of that illusion of moderation or he will stomp our candidate. We also have to show that Iraq and the disasters and corruption in Washington were a result of Republican policies - not just Bush policies - of believing that the private sector fixes everything (or massive giveaways to the corporate elites if you prefer that language).

This election was about the fiasco in Iraq.  It was not a swing to the Democrats so much as a swing away from the current Administration.  We won't be so lucky with national issues next time and now have to show that Democrats are competent and have a coherent philosophy that is appealing to the majority of this country's voters.

I read unbridled optimism here. It will take hard work to erase this 8%. Difficult but doable in an unusual year, and if any year is unusual this one is.

But I have to insert a dose of realism to some comments: Young people have terrible turnout.  I am delighted that they are enthused, but in past years when that was true, they still had low turnout. When you look at the data, there is a straight line increase of turnout by age, all the way to 80 years old. So younger people could increase their turnout a bit but the bulk of the votes are coming from older voters.

Second, poor and disadvantaged people also have low turnout.  Frankly it's hard to find time to vote when you have two jobs or inflexible employers and are juggling childcare and odd work hours.  The middle class have it much easier finding time to vote. So to get higher turnout from disadvantaged voters means lots of field effort to know when each voter is available to vote and if they need help getting to the polls or with kids etc. That's a big operation.

So let's not rest our hopes on enthused younger voters or the disadvantaged turning out without a lot of work on our part.  The polls are encouraging in many races across the country but we need to keep pushing with everything we've got and close the deal.  One more week.

I think you draw the wrong conclusions from your analysis.  

Yes, it's interesting that the Democrats might actually win back the House this election without many southern seats, given how monolithic the South has been for one intrenched party for decades.

But the main drivers of any swing this election are clearly voters' revulsion at the Iraq War and associated blunders of the corrupt Republican leadership and Administration, not because of some fabulous new progressive message/frame/agenda which won over the rest of the country outside of the south. I wish it were so but it's not. Instead it's a very unusual year that's going our way, right down to Foleygate five weeks before the vote.

Think of it this way - if the Iraq War and Katrina and corruption scandals were not going on, how successful would a full-on progessive message and netroots campaign be?  Democrats might be making minor gains because of the usual 6th year voter fatigue for the party in power.  But I'm not even sure of that, given the strength of the Republican message machine, their more sophisticated field operation and the distortion of gerrymandered districts and incumbency.

I absolutely hope we get the House back and even the Senate and can start the long effort to repair the incredible damage that Bush and his team have done to the country. But progressives still have a lot to do to get our message development and campaign infrastructure up to the sophistication of the radical Republicans.

I agree with ck, your Harry Reid quote is too long and fragmented to remember.  Great for sub-bullets but needs a very short over-arching theme.

I suggest Democrats take Responsibility for the Community.  

Here's how it plays out against the Republicans.  The Rs say they are about:

  -  the individual, and
  -  freedom to reach your own potential,
  -  free from government intervention,
  -  free from government taxes
  -  free market etc.  

but what this really means is the Republicans leave you with no support if you aren't wealthy - if someone in your family gets really sick and your insurance runs out: tough luck, if you cannot afford private schools for your kids: tough luck, if you're stuck in a crummy low wage job: tough luck, if you cannot save enough to avoid poverty when you retire: tough luck.  

And underlying the Repub's political philosophy is the moral belief that if you are successful it's because you're virtuous, which of course means that if you're poor it's because you have some moral failing, not because you had a lousy education, lousy health care, weren't born rich or aren't blessed with a brilliant IQ.

The great thing about the Republican philosophy for the well-off is that it says to them: you don't have to feel guilty or responsible for anyone else.

Here's how this Democratic frame plays out:  Dems are for Community - we are all responsible for each other.  For helping those in need, for protecting the future - the environment, responsible fiscal policy, working with other countries to make the world a better place for all. Heck, we can even quote the Bible on that one. Remember the parable of the good Samaritan, or the story of how Jesus attacked the money lenders in the temple?  Jesus would be a Democrat if He were living today.

So we need to challenge the R's on their lack of community support, their craven avoidance of their responsibility to fund community needs, and especially their unspoken belief that poor people are morally responsible for their plight.

I have to believe that the vast majority of the people in this country do not hold the extreme views of the radical R's in power now and once we expose the Repubs for what they are doing to our country, their support will wither.

Great analysis.  But I agree that ten votes is pretty thin, especially when you try to balance the topic of the votes (social issues, economic...).

I think a similar analysis of the 2003-2004 Congress would be very enlightening, and give you a larger sample of votes.  Either you'd validate your analysis or find a pattern you hadn't seen in just ten votes.

What if the Repubs nominate a woman for VP?  One possibility - Condi Rice is a two-fer (black and female).  She's weak but could pull a few percentage points away from the Democratic black vote and Dem female vote.  

One reason we struggle is because we focus so much on the Candidate who then reinvents the party every campaign.  The party traditionally hasn't had have money in between elections for continuity of policy making or infrastrucure.  As Bill Bradley pointed out in the New York Times two weeks ago (3/30):

"Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on. Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too. Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people.

"There is no clearly identifiable funding base for Democratic policy organizations, and in the frantic campaign rush there is no time for patient, long-term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas. Campaigns don't start thinking about a Democratic brand until halfway through the election year, by which time winning the daily news cycle takes precedence over building a consistent message. The closest that Democrats get to a brand is a catchy slogan."

I've personal experience of the lack of good planning and infrastructure from the trenches of the recent national election, at least in my city, and I'm told this was true across the country.  It felt like we were trying to build better wings on our jet in mid-flight: a hell of a struggle and the result wasn't very good.

We need time between elections to build strong institutions and craft message frameworks and nurture candidates for lower offices.

So enough with tactical thinking, infighting for position with emerging candidates, inside the Beltway consultants.  We need a party that is out in the 50 states the whole time.

I agree with Jon, you need to know how important an issue is to someone before you can tell if the party's position on that issue might change their vote.

It's also a mistake to look at averages across the whole electorate to see which issues are ranked most important. This buries distinct subgroups who care about specific issues.  The goal is to look for coherent groups of voters with similiar views about what is important. It gets a bit more complicated because most people are not one issue voters, so you need to consider the interplay of different issues and how they overlap between subgroups.  Only then can you tell which issues will move voters to your side without alienating too many other voters.

The good news is that this has been done before and there are well developed techniques for identifying the most critical issues and subgroups for your candidate.

My concern is that I'd bet the R's have been doing this for years but it doesn't sound as if the Dem's have. This is not something you knock out overnight. Bill Bradley's op-ed in the New York Time this week described how Democratic presidential candidates find little existing infrastructure providing idea and message development.

There is no way a candidate's organization has time in the heat of a campaign to start from scatch and develop the systems and voter analysis and then create a coherent position on the issues.  No wonder our messages sound like a wish list from various interest groups.  It's not that the positions are wrong, they just haven't been given a strong narative holding them together.

I hope Howard Dean and the DNC understands how critical this is and is woerking to fix it.