Gans also offers some surprising information on partisan registration. He has analyzed the 13 states that have supplied partisan registration voting data, comparing them to prior years. Relative to 2002, the Republicans have actually closed the registration gap. In 2002, the Democrats had a 7.0% registration advantage over Republicans in these 13 states. This year, their advantage is down to 5.8%. I won't report the actual figures because they are inflated (due to deaths and geographical movement), but the trend lines here are, as Gans argues, valid (so long, of course, as Democrats are no more likely to have died or moved than Republicans).

Nevertheless, this data offers some interesting qualifications on the "disspirited" storyline that the press has embraced. If Republicans are disspirited, they do not seem to be expressing it by altering their long-term registration habits in these 13 states.