Dubois put an exclamation point on their sentiments when he said the group, after seeing McCaskill, planned to memorialize the president during their golf game that morning. "We're going to call every golf ball George Bush" and hit it, said Dubois, a retired contractor.
Polls suggest that the three are hardly alone in their sentiments. In the 2002 congressional contests, postelection surveys showed that Republicans ran even with independent voters. In 2004, Bush lost them narrowly to the Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry.
But this year, in contests as diverse as the gubernatorial races in Colorado and Michigan, the Senate race in Pennsylvania, the highly contested House race between Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.) and New Mexico Atty. Gen. Patricia Madrid, and open Republican-held House seats in Arizona and Colorado, polls last week showed Democrats leading among independents by at least 20 percentage points.
A recent Times/Bloomberg survey showed Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown leading GOP Sen. Mike DeWine by a dozen percentage points with independents in Ohio. CNN surveys last week showed Democratic Senate candidates holding leads of 7 to 9 percentage points with independent voters even in Missouri, Virginia and Tennessee, three right-leaning states.
In a compilation of more than 41,000 automated survey interviews conducted last week in competitive congressional districts from coast to coast, the nonpartisan Majority Watch project found that independents preferred Democratic candidates over Republicans by 52% to 39%.
Despite the national numbers, Mehlman said he believed that in districts with the largest percentages of independent voters, Republicans would survive because they had built strong personal ties to those constituents; he cited Reps. Nancy L. Johnson in Connecticut, E. Clay Shaw Jr. in Florida and Jim Gerlach in suburban Philadelphia.
But public surveys last week showed Johnson and Gerlach lagging among independents -- and trailing their Democratic challengers. No new figures were available for Shaw.
In some key contests, the GOP base may be large enough to produce a thin majority even if independents break toward the Democrats. Races on that list could include the Senate contest in Tennessee, and conceivably in Missouri and Montana, as well as House races in districts that tilt heavily toward the GOP in states such as Kentucky and Nebraska.
