if the voting patterns today were the same now as it always has been

[freepcrusher]

  would 2009-2011 be the high point of democratic power? This is something I thought of while in bed a few nights ago. If people voted the way they did now, I think that democrats would have struggled to get above 35 percent of the vote oftentimes in presidential elections in the old days. If there was minimal ticket splitting similar to now, Republicans probably would have gotten past the 60 and 261 (3/5) threshold most of the time in congress.

Looking at the old ACU and ADA ratings I found that democrats often had huge majorities because many of the democrats were actually republicans with a D next to their name. You had guys like Omar Burleson or Ray Roberts who had no business being in the democratic party. I also find that if you take the old confederacy out of the equation, the democrats in the 111th congress had their largest congressional majority in 72 years.

I mean I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met that said they used to be democrats and are now republicans or republicans saying how their parents used to be democrats. It is safe to say that democrats have lost about half of all of their voters. One could see how that was happening from 1968-1988. It wasn’t until 1992 when youth voting and minority voting strength basically offset it and many of the old "Reagan Democrats" were dying off. My opinion is that if the population, demographics and viewpoints of Americans in 1956 combined with the current voting patterns of whites (especially white males) on social issues; that the country would have been 70-30 republican back then. Does anyone here agree?