I wrote: "It seems to me that cosmic 'dark matter' in all this has always been the alienated non-voters rather than voters' switching ballots...."
Carrol asked, "Wasn't this true even in 1936? That is, FDR's huge majority that year was made up more of new voters than of Republicans who switched?" I think so...and probably, to some extent of every one of the great shifts in the party alignments in the past, including very dramatically the explosive success of the Republicans as a successful third party movement in 1854-60. Perhaps the astronomic analogy to "dark matter"--not visible but having gravity--might be more dramatic if we think of the non-voters as that nearby little Nemesis star suggested to periodically approach the solar system, disrupt the asteroid belt, and create mass extinctions.... When things get bad enough for the non-voters to engage, though, its certainly going to have an impact. Best, Mark L.
