Bush Loses His Edge

Andrew Kohut, of the Pew Research Center, has this interesting take on what last November's elections mean.

Issues the Republicans stressed paid few dividends: Most notably, the many voters concerned about terrorism backed GOP candidates over Democrats by only the modest margin of 5 percentage points. The threat of terrorism is still much on the public's mind, but voters are no longer persuaded that Republicans know best how to deal with it. Discontent with Iraq has taken terrorism off the table for the Republicans. By a margin of 59%-35%, voters said that the war in Iraq did not improve U.S. security.