Those infuriated partisans then lack any "exit" option because alternative parties are not viable in first-past-the-post systems, unlike proportional-representation systems, where Israeli leftists unhappy with Labour can shift their votes to Kadima.
What's more, this year's exit polls suggested a partisan shift but no ideological realignment.
Tony Korec Medford, N.Y., Nov. 11, 2008 To the Editor: William Kristol argues that Republican leaders should take comfort in exit polls suggesting "a partisan shift but no ideological realignment".
Speculation has spread – by supporters of both candidates – about whether Mr. Obama throwing a financial lifeline would help bridge the divide between the partisans and offer Mrs. Clinton an exit strategy.
Exit polls also suggest that partisan defection rates were higher than in the past, which was expected, though about equal across the parties (with roughly 90percentt of partisans supporting their nominee), which was not expected.
A transfer of power is orderly when it is effected by procedural rules that are indifferent to the partisan, ideological affiliations of either the party exiting power or the party taking power.
The 112th Congress lurched to the exits the way it started — amid partisan acrimony and backbiting even within the parties.
For the Americans, known to their long-suffering partisans as the Amerks, Brooklyn was the last exit on a rather sad journey.
With Mr. Pataki's exit approaching, Mr. D'Amato began hedging his partisan bets by raising hundreds of thousands for Eliot Spitzer's Democratic campaign for governor in 2006 and praising him glowingly while conspicuously failing to endorse his Republican opponent.
On Election Day 2004, exit polls showed the proportion of self-described partisans to be identical: 37percentt described themselves as Democrats, and 37percentt as Republicans.
