Morrissey: Notes from the collapse

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/05/notes-from-the-collapse/

Using these numbers, we can see that Barack Obama succeeded in turning out his base much more effectively than McCain did his.  How do we know that it's a base turnout rather than a tsunami of opinion to Democrats?  For one thing, Dems didn't pick up a boatload of new seats in the House, and they may underperform expectations yet in the Senate.  They did gain some strength with independents, but only gaining between 11-20 seats in the House tells us that they found votes in districts they already control, more than finding converts.

John McCain and the GOP didn't get their turnout in this race.  They lost almost seven million voters from 2004, a rather stunning number.  We'll be chewing on this for a while, but that's more than 10% of the Bush vote that got lost in this election.  Did they stay home, or did significant numbers of them defect to Obama?  I'm guessing the former.  The GOP demoralized their base by acting like Democrats for too many years, and the winds of "change" proved too dispiriting this time around.