*double take* you registered as a Republican in Hawaii? You must feel rather lonely. As I understand it Hawaii is overwhelmingly Democratic, right?
Actually, you don't register a party here in Hawii, all local and primary elections are non-partisan.
The state is overwhelmingly Democratic, but did manage to elect a Republcian Governor for the first time since Statehood in 2002. The overwhelming democraticness is partially due to the fact that Military personnel don't vote here because they don't claim residence here, because of the confiscatory tax structure. There are a lot of other social reasons for the Democratic strength; the high proportion of workers employed by either the City/County or the State (>25 %) and the strength of the labor unions is probably a big part of it.
I think that the "There, there" nationally may be growing. One reason independent voters don't vote independent is because either they can't (there are places that don't allow independent candidates on ballots) or because of a lack of a choice. These are independent voters. There are independents out there who are non-voters for these reasons.
I remember the election in '80 where John Anderson ran as a minimally viable independent candidate. I think these kinds of candidates have grown in popularity to the point of significantly affecting election outcomes (Perot in '92). Given the growing dissatisfaction with mainstream candidates, the use of the internet which came into its own this this year in terms of MoveOn.org, and the inability of either of the 2 major parties to budge undecided voters thus far, I still think there is a growing opportunity for something to emerge in the middle; possibly something more 'populist', likely appealing to young and possibly also 2nd-3rd generation (established) immigrant populations. I also believe that African Americans in the US generally don't have a political option that they can really buy into and this will probably begin to play itself out in elections for House/Senate seats soon as higher proportions of AA populations vote in elections; this could also begin to fuel either very significant change in one of the major parties in terms of platform or the emergence of a viable third party.
The two major parties have begun to drift toward one another in a lot of the issues they used to fight over. They will have an interesting time differentiating their platforms. This is where a third party could begin to develon an identity and begin to catch the undecideds.
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Topic: Barack Obama... (Read 13676 times)