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Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan
And once again, you totally missed the point I made. If the moral issues that were on the 2004 ballots in several states that drove Republican turnout were not in place, that status quo would not have held. The Republican Party drove turnout by putting issues on the ballots in key states that would help their candidates' chances. The Democrats would have pulled seats in that election had the Republicans not done that.
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and this portion of the article debunks that assertion:
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State legislative elections did not show any Republican trend either. To the contrary, Republicans lost a net of 76 seats, going from a 64-seat edge nationally down to a 12-seat deficit among 7382 total seats (National Conference of State Legislatures, Press Release Democrats Appear to Make Gains in America's State Legislatures; Top 10 Legislative Election Sites Named; Election Results and Analysis). Numerous chambers changed from one party to the other with small shifts in seat control, attesting that the two parties are basically at par in seats and public allegiance (NCSL's StateVote 2004 and NCSLnet StateVote 2004 Party Control). That's easy to miss for Missourians, who witnessed consolidation of Republican control as they took the governor's chair plus 120 of the 197 seats in the Missouri General Assembly. This was a gain of 10 seats over the 2002 result (NCSLnet Search Results Partisan Composition of State Legislatures - Missouri).
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If there were local issues that drove Republican turnout, then how did Democrats pick up seats at the local level?
It seems that there was little to no backlash in the 2004 Federal elections agains the Republicans, but at the local level it seems that there was a change towards the Democrats. So this pretty much refutes both the points you were trying to make. Unless you were trying to say that people were sending a message by re-electing their Republican congressmen, and giving them a warning by electing Democrats at the local level. That is a very tenuous link to make, and goes against your original assertions.