What the American Voter Seems to Want

After thinking about the 3 debates I have seen (2 Presidential, 1 VP), keeping a daily watch on state polls, looking at lawn signs (and the particular combination of signs on lawns) and reading a ton of articles trying to weed out partisan bias, I have a few observations on where the American Voter is trending. This isn't to say this is what a majority of voters are thinking, rather where there has been the largest movement in thinking.

Voters want a President who will keep them in mind as they try solving our Economic mess.

Voters don't want to hear negatives about either candidate, there are enough negatives in daily life and headlines. They want to be given a realistic hope that someone in charge has an idea of how to make things better.

Although they want someone to stick up for them, they don't necessarily want a fighter, they want a calm and rational person who won't settle for unacceptable solutions.

As in 1980, voters are willing to go against their traditional allegiances to have a shot at a future that looks different than the present.

Things that don't seem to matter as much this year:

Conservative vs. Liberal
Quantity of Experience
Military Experience
Foreign Affairs Experience

Although there are several weeks left until Election Day, in past elections, when the numbers looked like this, the end result was very one sided. It appears that at best McCain could squeeze out a narrow victory by a few electoral votes, however, the more likely outcome is that Obama takes over 330 Electoral votes, winning comfortably.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan held his own in the last debate, everyone who wanted a change, but was concerned about voting for an elderly statesman, decided RR was going to be OK, and cast their lot with him. The term 'Reagan Democrats' was born and the result (thanks to Dave Leip's great website) looked like this:

The website swaps the current association of Red and Blue colors for the reason that traditionally Blue was used for Republicans and Red for Democrats.

This map still amazes me (the 1984 map is even more stunning, but was more expected).

While I don't think Obama's map will look anything remotely this dominant (especially since a lot of strong Republican states are large geographically but sparsely populated and therefore have few electoral votes), there will be some long standing Republican states that will wind up casting their electoral votes for Obama. Perhaps there will even be a reason to coin the term "Obama Republicans", but at this point, I wouldn't go that far.