Bush Campaign Manager Views the Electoral Divide

Bush Campaign Manager Views the Electoral Divide

And the divide appears not to be geographic, but demographic:

"The Bush campaign studied consumer habits in trying to predict whom people would vote for in a presidential election.

'We did what Visa did,' Mr. Mehlman said. 'We acquired a lot of consumer data. What magazine do you subscribe to? Do you own a gun? How often do the folks go to church? Where do you send your kids to school? Are you married?

'Based on that, we were able to develop an exact kind of consumer model that corporate America does every day to predict how people vote - not based on where they live but how they live,' he said. 'That was critically important to our success.'

"If you drive a Volvo and you do yoga, you are pretty much a Democrat," Mr. Mehlman told an assembly of the nation's Republican governors. "If you drive a Lincoln or a BMW and you own a gun, you're voting for George Bush."

This would explain a lot of small, incremental Republican on the margins - a point or two higher in some county or precinct or age bracket...

Fascinating, a little creepy, but probably necessary for Dems to catch up with it.