I usually don’t read Bill Bradley, and frankly neither of us could pick each other out of a line-up. Up until the last 10 minutes or so, I had no idea what his background was.

But I happened to check in on www.rtumble.com and noticed Bradley’s comments about the decline of partisan registration and partisanship in general. In short, he states the real fact that Decline to State Voters have increased in number, and then attributes to them a series of ideological beliefs.

Here is the problem: it’s actually much, much more complicated than that.

Here’s what I’ve gathered from my polling and voter identification of DTS and American Independent voters (they don’t think George Wallace… they think they are ‘independent voters’): there are distinct subgroups you can’t ‘average’ together unless you want to screw up voter contact.

In short, and I’m looking at data (both polling and voter ID and this is average) from 5 Assembly Districts, a Congressional District, and several cities, about 1/3 of this Independent bloc are closet Republicans who pretty much vote the ticket. About 1/3 are closet Democrats who pretty much vote the ticket. Note that the ‘closet’ folks are actually more party loyal than folks I’d call ‘soft’ Reps and Dems. Odd, but there it is. My dad was AIP for years and ‘always voted the man’. That man was Republican every time. And the culture of America today says that’s just how you SHOULD answer the question of who you will vote for.

The remaining 1/3 or whatever are a hodgepodge of (1) actual folks who don’t agree with political parties – note this is the smallest group; (2) folks who don’t follow politics enough to pick a political team – note this is the largest group; and (3) angry folks. Note I’ve found subgroup (2) is difficult to influence and virtually always votes with the perceived winner.

I’ve listened to the tales of the decline and fall of the political parties for 20 years now. I’ve heard the consultants one generation above me laugh at the idea of party loyalty. And yet… the single biggest factor in the determination of how a voter will vote is SELF IDENTIFIED party affiliation. And I’ve come up with test after test in polling and focus groups and voter ID and the truth is most self identified Republicans vote the ticket if they know what it is, and most, but fewer, self identified Democrats vote the ticket if they know what it is. And friends and readers, simply cause I’m interested in this I’ve been stuffing these questions in for a few years and I’m finding increased partisan loyalty over several years, not less.

I’ve come up with a pretty good bet. For all you folks who believe that partisan affiliation is falling away – you pick a reasonable race with two candidates. You don’t target or use partisan affiliation. Use whatever else you want and show us how powerful it is. Coronado will only target by partisan affiliation and nothing else other than propensity to vote. Let’s see who wins.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.