Bloomberg News: Democrats Convene With Most Advantages Post-Watergate
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Heidi Przybyla
....State polls suggest strong showings for Democratic candidates running for offices ranging from magistrate to president; this pattern has emerged in almost two-dozen states as Democrats see the best national conditions for their party since the 1970s...."Watergate is the last time things were so overwhelmingly tilted against the Republicans," said David Rohde, a political scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Democrats (kicked) off their nominating convention in Denver (Monday) expecting strong gains up and down the ballot, even in many historically Republican counties and states. Their optimism is fueled by widespread discontent with the Bush administration, anxiety over the economy, rising Democratic registration, unprecedented turnout in primaries and record fundraising by Obama.
The political energy is on the Democrats' side. In a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll published Aug. 19, 55 percent of party voters said they are "very enthusiastic" about their presidential candidate, compared with 29 percent of Republicans.
Even if Obama, 47, and McCain, 71, remain locked in a tight race, the Democrats expect to sweep many down-ballot offices. That confidence is justified, said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. In the first six months of 2008, the number of Americans who identified themselves as Democrats was 14 percentage points higher than the number who said they were Republicans, she said....Since the last presidential election, Democrats and independents have gained in most of the 28 states -- along with the District of Columbia -- where voters register by party, as Republican rolls have dropped, state data show....
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Moreover, Democratic turnout was dramatically higher in this year's primaries....
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Mark Herring, a Democratic Virginia state senator, said voters are turning away from Republicans because "they've seen that problems haven't gotten fixed when elected officials are focused on social issues or ideology."
Nationally, the Democrats have another important asset: The party has broken a four-decade Republican advantage in fundraising....
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According to a recent study by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, young voters who came of age during the Bush administration are giving Democrats a wide advantage, just as the previous generation that came of age under Ronald Reagan helped fuel the Republican congressional surge of the 1990s. Fifty-eight percent of voters under 30 are Democrats or lean Democratic, while only 33 percent associate with Republicans, Pew found. The Democrats' advantage among young people has more than doubled since 2004, to 25 points from 11 points.
Hispanic voters have also moved further toward Democrats in the past two years, as Republicans have made immigration and border protection a central issue. Sixty-five percent of Hispanic voters identify with or lean toward the Democrats, compared with 26 percent who identify with or lean Republican.
No similarly significant demographic group has moved toward the Republicans in recent years....
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=auFdzt9Pbsrk&refer=worldwide 
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