Little Movement In Duval County Registered Voter Gains & Party ID's

Since I'm doing a little blog site cleanup and updating I was taking a look at the number of Duval County registered voter and party ID breakdown from May of 2008 and comparing it to the new year and found the results to be quite unsurprising. This would seem par for the course in light of how both Democratically controlled houses have performed since the 2008 election results.

The poor performance put forth by both houses only reinforces those voters' qualms about politics in general and makes a fine recipe for disaster at the polls this coming November for the Democratic party. Watching the party allowing the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson to hold them hostage and then employing a strategy of pandering to Olympia Snowe and et al for the construction of a Potemkin village of bipartisanship was mind boggling. Watching this train wreck strategy that could only lead to a perfect storm for electoral disaster for the Democrats in the 2010 midterms was enough to make political junkies like myself along with local and regional political acolytes want to take the gas.

First let's look at the numbers for a comparative breakdown for 01/03/2010 vs. 05/30/2008:

REGISTERED VOTERS As OF 01/03/2010

Democratic: 240,688 (45.43%)

Republicans: 193,103 (36.45%)

Other: 96,023 (18.19%)Total: 529,814

REGISTERED VOTERS AS OF 05/30/2008

Democrats: 216,908 (44.65%)

Republicans: 184,174 (37.91%)

Other: 84,695 (17.43%)Total: 485,777

A 1% gain for the Democratic Party here over this 18 month period is nothing to write home about. In fact if there is any news in this comparative at all, it would be how the Duval County Republican party has managed to stave off disaster by avoiding a tsunami of voter registration discontent and it translating into a widening shift in the gap of party ID and growth. If the last eight years could not drive a widening gap in this regard then I'm not sure its possible to make it happen under any circumstances. George W. Bush by any stretch of imagination was an unmitigated disaster of a President and for Republicans in general. There is not doubt that this led to a loss of both houses for the Republicans but just barely when one takes the time to analyze the numbers for real world impact.

The Democrats still have a lot of work to do to redeem themselves. At this point in the game redemption would only mitigate losses to a minimum, not stop them. Let's hope the Democrats have it in them. Only time will tell.