Mo. Dems hand Mo. GOP key to victory in 2008?

The argument against a minority party in a district filing a candidate there is that the challenged incumbent will work harder to get his supporters to vote, supporters loyal to her/him who will probably vote for the rest of the ticket while they are there, but who wouldn't vote for any of them if they had stayed comfortably at home.

Both sides of the strategic argument have some merit.

St. Louis Oracle: In a low turnout election, your counterpoint argument does often hold true. However, St. Louis City regularly has turnouts of 60 to 80 percent of registered voters. All of the Democrat voters who are going to vote are already voting. A large portion of the non-voting registered voters are Republican voters who have been repeatedly told that their votes don't count. With only the top of the ticket to vote for (and all of the news folks saying that the election will be decided by the suburban votes) and only Democrats to vote for locally (state reps, state senate, and local offices), they simply choose to stay home. In a contested general election in St. Louis City, it's the Republican voters that are the additional votes.