Democrats after 2010 census

[Alcon]

In the end, the southwest is a hold for Republicans under the current positions. The parties would have to shift their issue positions in order to make different parts of the country competitive. And with an increasing number (now 42%) of hispanics going for Bush, and most Hispanics going for Bush in the states that are actually important, such as Florida, the Hispanic population has already delivered the presidency to Republicans twice but has never delivered it to a single Democrat. Therefore, the most surefire suicide strategy by the Democrats that I can see would be to continue to rely on "the hispanic vote" and a miraculous "trend in the southwest". For them, it should be wake up and smell the coffee: change yourselves first. Re-alignments have not been built on demographic trends but on new issue positions. For example: the South didn't change in the 1960s-2000s. The parties did.

once again comparing apples to oranges.

Hispanics in Florida are mostly Cubans, which have entirely different voting patterns and always have. Florida can't be compared to the entire nation in this context.

Acctually, most Hispanics in Florida today are non-Cubans, if I am not mistaken.  I believe that Cubans only make up a little more than 40% of the total Hispanic vote in FL.

This may be true, but 40% of the population is a huge amount. That can turn a 20% defecit into a tie.

[Alcon]

Yes but you're also forgetting VA, FL and possibly NC are trending Dem. On the other hand PA, WI, and IA is trending R.

None of those states are trending Democrat. The opposite is true in FL.

I don't think that any of those states except for WI and IA are trending at all. WI and IA are slowly trending Republican.

I don't buy the FL stuff. One election does not a trend make.

[Alcon]

It's not one election. We're making gains in registration.

This is a state where both chambers of the state legislature are comfortably Republican, and where the GOP governor got elected with a double digit margin.

Governorships don't necessarily have anything to do with the state in question, nor legislature. I have not seen registration statistics updated for the latest election. That's the only thing I'd consider looking at.

In any case, I think much of it was Bush's hurricane help. I expect a minor Republican advantage.