Anti-Climacus

THE DYNAMICS OF THE GENERAL ELECTION: or, Why Turnout Might Be Really, Really Low:

Go here, flip West Virginia back into the Democratic column, and you have my prediction for the Presidential election. It's been my more-or-less expressed theory for the last week or so that turnout, surprisingly, might be lower than everyone's expecting. Here's why:

1. ceteris paribus, no one is going to become more enamored of Bush or (I'm being presumptuous, I know) Kerry as time goes on. Bush will shed off partisan support so long as he keeps expanding the size of the federal government (I think this year might be a sign of whether or not libertarianism constitutes a serious political movement), and, far more importantly, the intensity of his non-partisan support is likely to shrink because even if you're not rabidly Republican, he's still doing some things you don't like, and those tend to be the things voters remember.

Kerry's not going to do any better because we saw last year how well he handled the scrutiny of being the presumptive front-runner when it was only super-wonks like myself who were following these things. He's going to get bloodied. He suffers the Al Gore disease: it's nigh-impossible to be passionate about him (Upper Left will probably disagree with me on that one). It's also not clear exactly how deep his support is (OGIW sent me a conversation with a friend of hers where this point was discussed; hat tip to them), and the speed with which people went from Dean/Clark to Kerry should raise some questions about the depth of that support.

Further, there's the not inconsiderable splinter-group of metropoliticals (Michael Totten, Jeff Jarvis, etc etc), who would be inclined to vote for Bush on the War on Terror but are trying to break the habits of lifetime Democratic voting. It's not clear how they're going to go, and I won't discount the possibility they'll sit the election out (as I am considering doing).

2. In swing states (my latest list is: Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania and maybe New York), turnout is probably going to be very high. But given 1., people who live in states with large populations where the end conclusion is pretty certain (Texas, California, Illinois, and possibly New York as well) are not likely to come out to vote--at least not in the same numbers they would if they were really fired up.