A Failing Strategy?
There may be a huge backfiring strategy in play in many states and districts. The Washington Post writes about a strategy by both the DNC and RNC to bring voters who don't care about any candidates on the ballot to the polls using ballot initiatives. The hope is that these candidate neutral voters will show up to vote on initiatives like banning smoking, limiting taxes, or stem cell research, in the hope that by virtue of their affinity with that conservative or liberal initiative, they will
also vote party ticket for the conservative or liberal candidate.
This has all the makings of a whopping backfire in an election climate of huge anti-incumbent sentiment. These ballot initiatives may very well bring out far more anti-incumbent voters who otherwise would have stayed home for lack of appeal to either of the candidates. If this ballot initiative strategy is as ill-conceived a strategy as I think it is, we could actually see some surprise reversals in some races, where the anti-incumbent voter's turnout became far higher than strategists expected, thanks to the ballot initiatives.
