It seems to me that cosmic "dark matter" in all this has always been the alienated non-voters rather than voters' switching ballots....
Talk about shifts in the electorate shouldn't obscure this dimension, which seems to explain much of what happened. In these kind of off-year elections, participation usually plummets. In 2006, it often seems to have approached the turnout for a general election. That means that legions of those Latinos, for example, did not shift to the Democrats but that more who wouldn't ordinarily have voted turned out and voted Democratic. This changed the proportion. This is certainly true in terms of the young or the working class and "lower middle class" voter. It wasn't so much that they "switched votes dramatically" from the Republicans to the Democrats, but that they voted rather than stayed at home. The proportion of voters in union households has declined so rapidly over the last 10-20 years (and more) that this "switch" also may be more apparent than real...indicating a growing proportion or shrinking numbers..... The entire language of shifting votes between the major parties is based on a series of assumptions that have little solid foundation. Solidarity! Mark L.
