Over at The American Scene, Reihan Salam argues that we’re seeing the beginnings of a Republican revival:

A few strange things have been happening — voters now believe that energy policy is more important than Iraq Sununu is catching up with Shaheen in New Hampshire; Norm Coleman has a solid lead over his Democratic challenger in Minnesota, though that race is likely to change shape; and, most significantly, John McCain has been gaining in Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota, despite his extreme crankiness and not-always-effective messaging.

This looks like the beginning of the two-party system righting itself — in the Feiler Faster spirit, we’re slowly getting back to 50-50. The mix of issues that are keeping Republican heads above water is different from what we’ve seen during the Bush era, and more attractive in some respects: spending restraint is making a rhetorical comeback, and pushback against environmentalists is taking the place of pushback against social liberals. Given mre straitened economic circumstances, this makes sense. Social issues — for liberals and conservatives — tend to be voting issues for the relatively affluent. If the goal is to move blue collar voters, job impact is what counts.

I think Reihan might be missing the forest for the trees, and looking at individual polls without taking the broader picture into account.  Let’s not forget, in New Hampshire, the polling has generally stayed within the 41-43 percent range for incumbent Republican John Sununu, and within the 48-50 percent range for challenger Jeanne Shaheen.  And in Minnesota, Norm Coleman probably owes his current resurgence to the advantages of incumbency, and the various controversies surrounding Al Franken’s candidacy.  Besides, the race has been close all year, and a single poll isn’t indication of any trend.  This goes too for recent polls showing McCain catching up with Obama in several key states.  John Sides at The Monkey Cage points out that “in 2 of these 4 key states, there has been no meaningful change, given the inherent sampling error in polls. In both Michigan and Wisconsin, McCain’s share is unchanged; Obama’s is down 2 points.”  The only place where there’s been sustained growth in McCain’s numbers is Colorado, and even then, Colorado is a traditionally Republican state, having gone Democratic only twice in the past twelve presidential elections.

When you take all of that into account, there doesn’t really seem to be the beginnings of much of anything.  Instead, what we see is that the electorate still pretty evenly divided, and that with few exceptions, most of the contested races are fairly close (including the presidential one). 

cross-posted from The United States of Jamerica