Yep, yep, yep, a thousand times yep..

Independents and NPAs decide elections. Period..

dsws,

Many of those would deny any party affiliation, but if you ask them how they voted you'll have to go back decades to find an election where they crossed party lines.

Or, in the SOME cases (who shall remain nameless) one only has to go back as far as the last two elections. :D

When "the American people" have these huge changes in what they supposedly believe, as represented in the election results, it's always because of changes in who's voting, not because of changes in how each person votes.

The 2008 Elections would seem to disprove this theory of yours. :D

Michale....

Actually, there are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary notation and those who don't.

The deciders of elections are always those in the middle.

Nope. The people in the middle always split, if not 50-50 then no more unevenly than 70-30. And there aren't all that many of them to begin with. So it doesn't even matter all that much how many of them vote.

At least 80% of the electorate, probably closer to 90%, is pretty solidly on one side or the other in terms of how they'll actually vote. Many of those would deny any party affiliation, but if you ask them how they voted you'll have to go back decades to find an election where they crossed party lines. But very often you'll only have to go back either two or four years to find an election where they didn't vote.

When "the American people" have these huge changes in what they supposedly believe, as represented in the election results, it's always because of changes in who's voting, not because of changes in how each person votes. That applies over the decades as well as from election to election.