Pederson's strategy was just spend spend spend on advertisements.  His ground game was abyssmal but has now started to improve.  It would be a waste of resources for the DSCC to go on the air in Arizona if Pederson didn't have boots on the ground.  That is all changing as the Pederson campaign is getting more organized.

Frankly, I'm sick the netroots money funneled to Carter wasn't directed to Titus instead. That was always the winnable race, not senate. I posted that repeatedly, on this site and elsewhere.

Two basics:

* Ensign has strength in Clark County while Gibbons does not

* Ensign may be bland rubber stamp but he is stable and competent, while Gibbons can mangle the most basic issue. He was caught plagarizing last year, words that obviously weren't his since they threatened to be clever. And you'd never hear Ensign say, "gosh, I learned never to lend a helping hand ever again." That was Gibbons' brilliant summation, at the end of his police statement regarding the Chrissy Mazzeo incident.

The two-term sitting governor Kenny Guinn is a Republican who wanted nothing to do with Gibbons, won't campaign for him or even say his name. That should have told us all we needed to know about Journeyman Jim Gibbons.

Pederson was impressive in the debate I watched and it puzzled me why there wasn't more emphasis on that race, but I don't pretend to know the dynamics of that campaign or Arizona politics in general.

Yes, that confused me too as its Madrid (D) vs. Wilson (R) . . . . Wilson got 20% of the Democratic vote in 2004?  Really?

Here's the first piece of data.

In Bernalillo Co, which covers the vast majority of the district, Democrats have a 1,000 vote edge in identified ballot returns.

According to Matt Farrauto, the executive dir. of the NM Dem party, 24,740 ballots have been requested by Democrats in Bernalillo, and 23,254 ballots have been requested by Republicans.

Early voting, too, favors Democrats in NM 01. According to Bernalillo County county clerk statistics, 8434 Democrats have voted early, compared to 6,041 Republicans and 1,864 others.

Farrauto: "Simply put, more Democrats have voted early and requested ballots than Republicans in CD 1."

And then there's this.

Dems say that 40 percent of voters in NM 01 who requested absentees were drop-offs -- that is, they voted in the presidential cycle but not in '02 -- while only 25 percent of Republican requesters were drop-off voters.

Of course, the Democratic officials could be lying.  But given that voter intensity surveys suggest Democrats are really really angry, and that Republicans are somewhat discouraged, I don't think they are.

You could have followed the links and found the answers for yourself.  It's the internets.

Politics is built on top of social networks, sitting on what one calls the power of weak ties.  High trust environments are more likely to see civic engagement, and higher trust environments are built on lots and lots of weak ties.  Youth have more and stronger weak ties these days because of internet culture, and are therefore more likely to vote.  They aren't just watching TV as their main source of information, they are getting lots of information from friends and using the internet to build their own social structures.  That means a better engaged citizenry.

I was not saying that Facebook/MySpace is a platform for activism.

The only thing I have to add is that people don't go to church to discuss politics, but it ends up being discussed.

that is anti-black voter suppression.  Pure and simple.