Holy crap. Huge quote ahead, pay attention.
Last month, the McCain campaign startlingly added Arizona to its list of 24 “battleground states,” a fact that state Democrats have clung to like sprinkles on a soft-serve ice cream cone.
“John McCain has striking vulnerabilities here,” said Emily DeRose, spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party . “We are going to take him to the mat. We are not giving him a pass in Arizona.”
What is more, the state’s Republican Party is more or less in disarray, split between its moderate and staunchly conservative factions. Its chairman, who cheerfully attended a Ron Paul campaign event here just two months ago, has been a thorn in Mr. McCain’s political side for years. On Super Tuesday, Mr. McCain captured 47 percent of his party’s voters, hardly the resounding victory that a candidate who has represented his state for over 25 years might expect.
…
Mr. McCain’s more relevant concern in this state may be the independents, who have been registering at a breakneck speed since the last presidential election and who, along with crossover Republicans, clearly helped elect Democrats in 2006.
For example, while registered Democrats accounted for only 33 percent of voters in 2006, Ms. Napolitano won re-election with 63 percent of the vote. In the state’s Fifth Congressional District — which Republicans had controlled since 1985 — a Democrat, Harry Mitchell, unseated the Republican incumbent, J. D. Hayworth, even though only 27 percent of voters were registered Democrats then, the same percentage as Republican voters. A similar dynamic drove the race in the Eighth Congressional District, where a Democrat prevailed in a race for an open seat.
“My research shows that in Arizona, the new independent is a different type of person from seven years ago,” said Mr. Merrill, the polling expert. “That voter was more libertarian, more get-government-out-of-my-life. The new independents, which went heavily Democratic in the last election, are much younger, better educated and overwhelmingly antiwar.”
Remember how Gore got railed for losing Tennessee? Imagine if McCain loses Ari-goddamn-Zona.
