Centerfield

What New Voters?

There has been a debate as to whether Democrats should go left, ignoring swing voters, and counting on their more progressive stance to bring new, untapped voters to the poll.

Here is Nick Confessore in Tapped

Today's Wall Street Journal story by John Harwood contains some of the worst news for Howard Dean I've seen in a long time. It implies that Dean and his campaign are buying into one of the left's oldest, hardiest myths about winning elections: That Democrats can win not by enlarging their share of people who already vote, but by bringing in "new" voters. Folks have been making this argument for years, and it's never come to pass. Harwood does his best to give Dean the benefit of the doubt. But it's remarkable that, in several thousand words, neither Harwood nor Dean's supporters generate a shred of evidence that he might succeed where others have failed:

Nathan Newman has some numbers that convincingly argue that voter turnout has not declined quite so much. He says

So since 1972, turnout has swung up and down 5%, a healthy margin to worry about-- add in the new possibilities of mobilization pioneered by Dean and the new union strategies for mobilization this year and turnout strategies look extremely attractive, especially compared to the uncertainties of appealing to the last couple of percentages of the "uncommitted."

It isn't that swing voters should be ignored, but given the polarization in the electorate, spending all your effort appealing to the maybe 10% of the population really in the swing category, compared to the 50% of the population that doesn't vote just seems stupid.

I don't quite get Nathan's argument. It seems to me that if turnout hasn't gone down as much as is conventionally described (because of a failure to adjust to the lowering of the voting age to 18) that means there is room to go up.

One might also question whether, as opposed to new bloggers, Dean can actually turn out new voters. Matt Stoller was blogging from a caucus room near the University of Iowa last night, and here is his headline "Dean Losing Among Students."

After Dean's Iowa debacle, let's say it again:

What new voters?

Here is my centrist message to liberals: You may not like it, but come November, you gotta go after the swing voters, like those of us here at Centerfield.

Update:
Also in TAPPED, Garance Franke-Ruta writing from Iowa, agrees:

The worst part of the Iowa loss is that it eviscerates the second half of Dean's message, that his ticket to electability -- despite his anti-war stance and his controversial comments -- is his organization. Dean had the most people on the ground and one of the best organizations in Iowa, but it didn't matter. "We didn't get our people out," Dean strategist Steve McMahon told me last night. "It wasn't for lack of trying."

Posted by rickheller at January 20, 2004 09:09 AM