Blog For Arizona

Arizona Republican Women Rejecting Bush

"Republicans for Kerry" often seems a forlorn hope rather than a actual constituency. But there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of Republican women in Arizona who are disgusted with Bush and are deciding, quietly and privately, to vote for John Kerry. This disillusionment is not confined to Arizona, either.

This President's actions have precipitated a crisis of conscience among an increasing number of Republicans. Men and women of conscience and faith are increasingly having trouble putting their vote to the service of the Bush/Cheney Radical Right agenda.

Will these quiet, often secret, converts to Kerry from the Republican party be enough to swing Arizona and other marginal swing states into Kerry's column? If a majority of undecideds and independents pitch their tents in Kerry's camp, I'm looking for joy on election day.

The strategy (and it is a strategy as pollsters know very well that many major polls following the RNC Convention are heavily skewed toward Republican opinion) of using misleading polls in the national media which are showing and 8-12 point race, is going to backfire. Because the race last week was really a 3 point race for Bush according to John Zogby (the only pollster to correctly predict Gore's late break and popular vote victory), and will narrow over this weekend to a dead heat, the appearance to voters will be of Kerry skyrocketing back into the race; moving up 8 to 12 points, seemingly overnight. The momentum of the Kerry campaign will be the major story next week which will further encourage fence sitters to step off into Kerry's patch.

The intense focus of the end of a campaign always seems to favor Kerry. He's shown that he and his team know well how to exploit momentum and opportunities at the end of a campaign. The increasing opportunities for voters to see Kerry and Bush in unscripted exchanges will certainly favored the polished and commanding Kerry over Bush's lackluster stumbling, as did at Thursday's debate.

As volunteer activity on the ground accellerates over the coming weeks, the race is going to be strongly affected by the GOTV efforts of the compaigns and their allies to get early ballots in the mail, convince last minute deciders, and get their voters to polls. Here again Democrats have the advantage, having registered new voters on an unprecedented scale. First time registrants vote at a very high rate, and existing Democratic voters are very motivated to turn the existing Administration out.

Help is on the way.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 10/02/2004 01:21:00 AM