Political Realignment Towards GOP

You know the old saying: "all politics is local." Well here's further confirmation of a political realignment cementing the Republican Party's hold on power taken from data collected by congressional district.

The one element missing here is that these new voters flocking to the GOP tend to be less conservative than the traditional GOP base. Support for Republicans might be a mile wide, but only inches deep. Thus, should conservatives become angered at the continuing compromise with shrill partisan Democrats in Washington they may choose to sit out the next election or go for some third party candidate... in which case... how does PRESIDENT HILLARY sound?

OpinionJournal - John Fund on the Trail: A treasure trove of data on the meaning of the 2004 presidential election has just been released, and you can bet that if reporters don't look at it carefully, strategists for potential candidates will. The 2004 election numbers may explain why Hillary Clinton is taking care to present herself as a centrist.
While we vote for president in local precincts and then see the election results reported by state and county, the way to get a feeling for the underlying trends of an election is to wait for the results to be broken down into the nation's 435 congressional districts.
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In 2000, Mr. Bush carried 228 congressional districts to Al Gore's 207 on his way to one of the closest victories in American history. This year Mr. Bush carried 255 congressional districts, nearly six in 10. The number of "turnover" districts--those voting for a House member of one party and a presidential candidate of the other--continues to shrink, mostly due to the growth of straight-ticket voting and gerrymandering. There were only 59 such districts in 2004, compared with 86 in 2000 and 110 when Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in 1996.

The best chances for Democrats to gain the 15 seats they need to take control of the House in 2006 are in these districts held by "Kerry Republicans." The problem is that there are so few of them. John Kerry carried just 18 GOP House members' districts, while Mr. Bush carried 41 Democratic ones.

Only five Republican House members currently sit in districts where Mr. Bush won less than 47% of the presidential vote last year: two in Connecticut, two in Iowa and one in Delaware. But 31 House Democrats represent districts where John Kerry won less than 47%. That means Republicans have many more opportunities to pick up seats in favorable political terrain as Democratic members leave the House.