EVEN though the polls are more than 15 months away, Washington D.C. is witnessing the first stirrings of election fever. Seeking to gain an early advantage over their rivals, presidential candidates are inclined to start winning over voters as early as possible.

Neither the incumbent president nor the vice-president will contest, leaving the field open to new faces in both parties. An interesting feature is that the Republican candidates cannot take advantage of their party’s control of the White House to promote their own candidate. In fact, with President Bush’s approval ratings hitting rock bottom, most Republicans don’t want the voters to associate them in any way with the current leadership’s failed policies.

One would have presumed that with the Bush presidency being held responsible for a disastrous war and its inevitable fallout, all that the Democrats needed to do was to pick a candidate who would then trounce his or her Republican opponent. But presidential elections in the US are determined by factors that have little to do with the agendas and manifestos of political parties.

They have more to do with the programmes and personalities of the candidates, because large numbers of Americans have no problem voting across party lines. In fact, no person has been able to win a presidential election by appealing to only his party faithful.

This is what makes elections in the US fascinating. The candidates remain visibly loyal to the party’s core principles, so they can get the party faithful to vote for them in the primaries. But once they have gained the party’s nomination they backpedal and fine-tune their efforts to move towards the centre to enhance their appeal to neutrals and even supporters of the other party.

In other words, Republican candidates have to be archconservatives to gain the nomination and the Democrats have to be liberals for a similar purpose. But both have to become centrists to win the national elections.

The best example of this was Bill Clinton, who realised early on that his party’s liberal agenda would never win him the presidency. So he had to develop the concept of the “New Democrat”.

Similarly, the goal of the Democrats now is to battle for the soul of the undecided. They are being nudged towards the centrist agenda in order to convince the broad middle of the country that the Democrats can be trusted on national security, family values and fiscal responsibility.

Al From, a Democratic Party veteran, is of the view that the stakes in the coming elections are huge and that the public’s unease over the war, healthcare and the economy has given for the “first time in modern political history” his party an opportunity to “build an enduring majority in the progressive centre.”

The danger for the Democrats lies in the hatred that its far left faction has for George Bush. This could lead them to think that they can win the elections without moderating their views. But history should caution them against such expectations: extremist agendas never win you elections. This is what party veterans are worried about and this is what the Republicans are hoping for — that their opponents will self-destruct on extremist platforms.

This is so even though many social scientists are of the view that the conservative movement is in danger of losing its attraction. Conservative domination of the country for the past 30 years had been such that it brought the Republicans remarkable success: five out of seven presidential elections and a dramatic seizure of the House in 1994 after 40 years of Democratic rule.

Political analysts believe that the US may now be the only western country to have a vibrant conservative movement in virtually every hamlet. The movement is proud of its support for guns and remains opposed to taxes and abortion. It can also count on the strong backing of the churches, which remain extremely influential. But for the first time in many decades, the movement appears to be facing a real crisis. The veterans are in a state of gloom, with Richard Viguerie, a conservative stalwart, admitting, “I have never seen conservatives so downright fed up.”

The latest evidence of growing disarray among the Republicans is the announcement that Karl Rove, President Bush’s political guru, credited with creating many winning coalitions, is quitting to devote more time to his family. No one is willing to buy this excuse, and suspect that he is “abandoning ship”.

The departure of the most influential and controversial presidential strategist of this generation is bound to send a distress signal to the party faithful. The White House did make a valiant effort to dismiss the impression that Rove’s departure signals the advent of what is known in this country as the “lame duck phase” of the presidency. But that is how most will view the Bush administration.

It is also a sign that during the last 17 months in office, Bush’s domestic agenda will consist of trying “to preserve programmes enacted in his first term, finding opportunities for discreet victories and engaging in veto battles with the Democratic-controlled Congress over spending and taxes.”

While the elections are still more than a year away and the primaries have not even begun, all indications point to the Democrats capturing the White House, which has led the media to state that the Republicans can win only if the other side “self-destructs”.

Senator John McCain, the early favourite of the Republicans, is short of money and big name supporters and his campaign has failed to catch fire, leaving many to believe that he will eventually drop out of the race. That would leave the field to Rudy Guiliani, the former mayor of New York. A “big tent” Republican, he arouses a lot of admiration among neutrals, but his liberal views on issues such as abortion and gay marriage have not gone down well with many conservatives in the party.

The other strong candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, who has the looks and the money to promote his candidature, but whose Mormon faith arouses considerable hostility among many Republicans.

All this has combined to give added confidence and assurance to the Democrats. This phenomenon is best reflected in recent polls showing that 40 per cent of Republicans believe that the Democrats will win the White House; but only 12 per cent of Democrats believe that the Republicans will win. This view is also reflected in the campaign contributions received by the candidates, which is always a powerful indicator of the direction in which the wind is blowing.

In the second quarter of this year, the two leading Democrats raised $60 million as against only $32 million by the two leading Republicans. Even more significantly, 61 per cent of Democratic primary voters are happy with their choice of candidates, compared to only 36 per cent of Republicans.

What about elections for the two Houses of Congress? The news for the Republicans is not very encouraging. In the 2006 elections, the Democrats picked up 31 House seats and six Senate seats, along with six governorships and 321 state legislature seats. This trend is still very much there and maybe getting stronger.

Moreover, the Republicans will be defending more vulnerable Senate seats than the Democrats in 2008. No wonder, a well-known Republican activist told me that the party is facing “disaster” in 2008.

Another interesting statistic relates to the numbers that identify themselves with one or the other party. In 2002, the American electorate was equally divided between the Democrats and the Republicans, with both sides hovering around 43 per cent. This year, only 35 per cent identified themselves as Republicans, while 50 per cent are proud to call themselves Democrats.

Even worse for the Republicans is the news that the young are moving away from the conservative philosophy. The proportion of 18- to 25-year-olds who identify with the Republican Party has declined from 55 per cent in 1991 to 35 per cent in 2006, according to the Pew Research Centre.

Moreover, the Republicans have alienated the country’s fastest growing ethnic group, the Hispanics, primarily because of their opposition to immigration reform. This is evident from the massive turnout of Hispanics in favour of Democrats in 2006 — estimated to be over 70 per cent.

What explains this slide in Republican fortunes? The most important is Bush’s track record. He has the worst approval ratings since Jimmy Carter — 29 per cent according to Newsweek and 31 per cent according to NBC.

An amazing 45 per cent, including 13 per cent of Republicans support impeaching Bush, according to the American Research Group. The obvious reason is the disaster in Iraq. A recent New York Times poll found that only 25 per cent of the population approved of Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq.

But it is not the Iraq war alone that explains the Republicans’ low approval ratings. Many of the party faithful are deeply annoyed at what they allege is Bush’s betrayal of the core principles of the conservatives, namely to reduce government and take it out of your daily life.

Bush has presided over the largest expansion in government since the Johnson administration’s Great Society programmes. His prescription drug benefit was the largest expansion of government entitlements in 40 years. He has increased federal education spending by about 60 per cent and added 7,000 pages of federal regulations. William Buckley, the high priest of the conservative movement, charges that had Bush been the leader in a parliamentary system, he would have had to resign.

This is not necessarily the whole story. In fact, Bush has bent over backwards in his desire to please the conservatives. He gave in to the demand of the neoconservatives to invade Iraq. He supported tax cuts for business and restricted federal funding for stem-cell research, preferred conservatives for judicial appointments and appointed people for their ideological purity rather than for their competence.

What does all this mean in the long term? There is nothing permanent in American politics. In the past, too, many social scientists were inclined to read the obituary of the conservatives. After all, the movement was born in the wake of the liberals’ glory days — the landslide victory of Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 elections — and was at its most combative when battling Clinton, especially when pushing for his impeachment.

It is not unlikely that Hillary Clinton’s nomination could re-energise the movement. In any case, this country remains staunchly conservative, deeply rooted as it is in its growing number of churchgoers, anti-tax groups and pro-gun activists. Nevertheless, if the current trend holds, the next incumbent of the White House should be a Democrat. What this will mean for Pakistan is what I intend to focus on next week.

The writer is a former ambassador.