Today is primary day and 3.5 million Flori

Sunday, October 29, 2006

California: Independent voters on the rise!

CALIFORNIA'S CHOICE Winning over the voters is a question of good timing, John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle: ..."Back when 58 or 59 percent of the voters called themselves Democrats, you could win by appealing just to your party,'' [Tony Quinn] said. "But now only about 43 percent of the registered voters are Democrats, and independent voters reject that strident partisanship.'' .... But the Iraq war has virtually disappeared from Angelides' recent speeches as polling showed that Schwarzenegger's popularity was rising even as concerns about the war grew. ....

More voters turned off by party extremes, California registers growing number of independents, By Mark Baldassare and David Lesher - Special to the Sacramento Bee: As the major political parties fall further out of vogue with new voters in California, Republican and Democratic candidates are finding it difficult to call on the party loyal for support on Election Day.
Democrats and Republicans are declining, and the number of voters belonging to third parties, including Green, Libertarian, Natural Law, and Peace and Freedom, are shrinking. But there are growing numbers of independent voters or those who "decline to state" their party when they register to vote. These trends have been under way since the early 1990s and seem to have accelerated after voters ousted Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and replaced him with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003.
Since then, the ranks of independent voters have swelled by about 415,000. Meanwhile, there are about 164,000 fewer voters in the two major parties. Today, 43 percent of voters are Democrats, 34 percent are Republicans, 4 percent belong to one of the other parties and 19 percent are independents, according to last month's data from the California secretary of state. With no party in the majority, the large group of independents will decide many statewide candidate races and ballot measures....

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