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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 01:37:05 PM
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August 30, 2010
www.gallup.com
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GOP Takes Unprecedented 10-Point Lead on Generic BallotRepublicans also maintain wide gap in enthusiasm about votingby Frank NewportPRINCETON, NJ -- R
epublicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP's largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress.
These results are based on aggregated data from registered voters surveyed Aug. 23-29 as part of Gallup Daily tracking. This marks the fifth week in a row in which Republicans have held an advantage over Democrats -- one that has ranged between 3 and 10 points.
The Republican leads of 6, 7, and 10 points this month are all higher than any previous midterm Republican advantage in Gallup's history of tracking the generic ballot, which dates to 1942. Prior to this year, the highest such gap was five points, measured in June 2002 and July 1994. Elections in both of these years resulted in significant Republican gains in House seats.
Large leads on the generic ballot are not unprecedented for Democrats. The widest generic ballot lead in Gallup's history was 32 points in the Democrats' favor, measured in July 1974, just prior to Republican President Richard Nixon's resignation over the Watergate scandal. This large margin illustrates Democrats' historic dominance over Republicans in registered voters' party identification in the decades since World War II. Democrats controlled the House of Representatives continually between 1955 and 1995, and routinely held generic ballot leads in the double digits during that period.
Republicans Have 25-Point Lead on Enthusiasm
Republicans are now twice as likely as Democrats to be "very" enthusiastic about voting, and now hold -- by one point -- the largest such advantage of the year.
Republicans usually turn out in higher numbers in midterm elections than do Democrats, and Gallup's likely voter modeling in the final weeks of an election typically reflects a larger GOP advantage than is evident among registered voters. The wide enthusiasm gaps in the GOP's favor so far this year certainly suggest that this scenario may well play itself out again this November.
Bottom Line
The last Gallup weekly generic ballot average before Labor Day underscores the fast-evolving conventional wisdom that the GOP is poised to make significant gains in this fall's midterm congressional elections. Gallup's generic ballot has historically proven an excellent predictor of the national vote for Congress, and the national vote in turn is an excellent predictor of House seats won and lost. Republicans' presumed turnout advantage, combined with their current 10-point registered-voter lead, suggests the potential for a major "wave" election in which the Republicans gain a large number of seats from the Democrats and in the process take back control of the House. One cautionary note: Democrats moved ahead in Gallup's generic ballot for several weeks earlier this summer, showing that change is possible between now and Election Day.
Explore more Gallup data relating to the upcoming congressional midterm elections, including Gallup's complete generic ballot trend since 1950, in our Election 2010 key indicators interactive.
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If nothing else, I am actively campaigning and volunteering my time to cock block Barry and make his marxist ass a lame duck.
Payback is a bitch.
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According to 240 it has nothing to do with Obama,its just the way the pendullum swings.Ha,ha,ha.
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According to 240 it has nothing to do with Obama,its just the way the pendullum swings.Ha,ha,ha.
the dems are going to start running for the hills by Friday and the September jobs number hits. I'm hearing 9.9% and 10.1% in october.
If that is the case, I see Barry possibly resigning or simply telling the left to fuck off so he can save himself. I don't think he will do that, but its a possibility.
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According to 240 it has nothing to do with Obama,its just the way the pendullum swings.Ha,ha,ha.
If obama had gotten NOTHING done, repubs would be yelling just as loudly.
The fact is, Obama accomplished most of his goals, which pissed off a lot of people.
It's that simple. Repubs were gonna bitch even if obama laid down and said "Whatever you say guys".
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If obama had gotten NOTHING done, repubs would be yelling just as loudly.
The fact is, Obama accomplished most of his goals, which pissed off a lot of people.
It's that simple. Repubs were gonna bitch even if obama laid down and said "Whatever you say guys".
240 - notice the trend lines though.
The Dems are going to get wiped off the map. Feingold, Murray, Boxer, are probably gone.
Driving around CT I saw "Linda" signs everywhere.
Rubio is going to win, Rand is going to win, and I even think Angle will win solely from the tide in the governors; race where Reid's son is getting destroyed.
I just wish the GOP ran Peter King v. Gillibrand in my state since that is another disgusting communist bitch that needs to go.
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pendulum swings. it's good news - washington will get very little done for the next 2 years.
6 years, if palin runs and giftwraps a second obama terms. Anyone else, obama will lose.
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Capital Connection Washington UB professor predicts House will go to RepublicansBy Robert J. McCarthy
NEWS POLITICAL REPORTER
Published:
August 29 2010, 12:00 AM
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A University at Buffalo political scientist with a sterling record of prognosticating presidential elections is predicting that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will turn over her gavel to the GOP come January.
The presiding Democrats stand to lose about 51 seats in November, says James E. Campbell, professor of political science at UB. His prediction stems from a crystal ball filled with scientific equations based on polling and current events, all pointing to a stunning reversal of fortune for Democrats, who took over the House in 2006.
“After two election setbacks, they are poised for a comeback,” Campbell says of Republicans. “Partisanship, ideology, the midterm decline from the prior presidential surge, the partisanship of districts being defended, and even President Obama’s approval ratings have set the stage for significant seat gains by Republicans in the House.”
In a paper he will deliver this week to the American Political Science Association meeting in Washington, Campbell analyzes a variety of political elements that he plugs into his final equation. They include:
• Polls pointing to a more conservative mood throughout the country.
• The suggestion that Democrats are “overexposed” and hold more seats than usual, thus leaving more seats in trouble.
• Cooperation with the Cook Political Report compiled by veteran Washington analyst Charlie Cook, which handicaps congressional elections across the country. Campbell calls Cook’s past analyses “impressive.”
• Presidential approval and its influence in previous midterm elections.
Campbell has used much of the same methodology to predict presidential elections with significant success. Now he uses variables specific to the House to bolster his contention that voters will pull more Republican levers.
“In June 2010, 42 percent of respondents told Gallup that they were conservatives, while 20 percent claimed to be liberals, and 35 percent said they were moderates,” he said. “The nearly even division in partisanship and the conservative tilt in ideology suggest that the current equilibrium in the electorate is far more Republican than the status quo in the House.”
Campbell does not dismiss what he sees in “tea party” rallies.
“Polls, primary turnouts, the emergence of the tea party movement, and Republican victories in 2009 [including Scott Brown’s 2010 Senate win in Massachusetts] are unmistakable stirrings of a revitalized right,” he concluded.
He also says Democrats may be a victim of their own success. While they scored significant gains in 2006 and 2008, they must now defend 47 seats in districts carried by George W. Bush in 2004 and John McCain in 2008.
And Campbell also notes that Obama’s slide in the polls stands in contrast to the coattails he provided congressional candidates in 2008.
“Although President Obama is not unpopular at this point [his approval ratings stand in the mid- 40s], neither does he have the strong approval ratings that would provide much help to his party in staving off significant midterm losses,” Campbell said.
“There is still an outside chance the Democrats could hold on,” he said Saturday.
Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, called such “formulaic modeling more academic than practical.”
“The events that will influence the midterm election have not yet occurred,” he said. “Anybody who believes the status quo was sustainable is kidding themselves.”
Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, declined to comment
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Capital Connection Washington UB professor predicts House will go to RepublicansBy Robert J. McCarthy
NEWS POLITICAL REPORTER
Published:
August 29 2010, 12:00 AM
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A University at Buffalo political scientist with a sterling record of prognosticating presidential elections is predicting that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will turn over her gavel to the GOP come January.
The presiding Democrats stand to lose about 51 seats in November, says James E. Campbell, professor of political science at UB. His prediction stems from a crystal ball filled with scientific equations based on polling and current events, all pointing to a stunning reversal of fortune for Democrats, who took over the House in 2006.
“After two election setbacks, they are poised for a comeback,” Campbell says of Republicans. “Partisanship, ideology, the midterm decline from the prior presidential surge, the partisanship of districts being defended, and even President Obama’s approval ratings have set the stage for significant seat gains by Republicans in the House.”
In a paper he will deliver this week to the American Political Science Association meeting in Washington, Campbell analyzes a variety of political elements that he plugs into his final equation. They include:
• Polls pointing to a more conservative mood throughout the country.
• The suggestion that Democrats are “overexposed” and hold more seats than usual, thus leaving more seats in trouble.
• Cooperation with the Cook Political Report compiled by veteran Washington analyst Charlie Cook, which handicaps congressional elections across the country. Campbell calls Cook’s past analyses “impressive.”
• Presidential approval and its influence in previous midterm elections.
Campbell has used much of the same methodology to predict presidential elections with significant success. Now he uses variables specific to the House to bolster his contention that voters will pull more Republican levers.
“In June 2010, 42 percent of respondents told Gallup that they were conservatives, while 20 percent claimed to be liberals, and 35 percent said they were moderates,” he said. “The nearly even division in partisanship and the conservative tilt in ideology suggest that the current equilibrium in the electorate is far more Republican than the status quo in the House.”
Campbell does not dismiss what he sees in “tea party” rallies.
“Polls, primary turnouts, the emergence of the tea party movement, and Republican victories in 2009 [including Scott Brown’s 2010 Senate win in Massachusetts] are unmistakable stirrings of a revitalized right,” he concluded.
He also says Democrats may be a victim of their own success. While they scored significant gains in 2006 and 2008, they must now defend 47 seats in districts carried by George W. Bush in 2004 and John McCain in 2008.
And Campbell also notes that Obama’s slide in the polls stands in contrast to the coattails he provided congressional candidates in 2008.
“Although President Obama is not unpopular at this point [his approval ratings stand in the mid- 40s], neither does he have the strong approval ratings that would provide much help to his party in staving off significant midterm losses,” Campbell said.
“There is still an outside chance the Democrats could hold on,” he said Saturday.
Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, called such “formulaic modeling more academic than practical.”
“The events that will influence the midterm election have not yet occurred,” he said. “Anybody who believes the status quo was sustainable is kidding themselves.”
Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, declined to comment
Racist Post Reported.
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latest poll data for all races
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/elections/
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does anyone else buy into the pendulum theory yet? And in another 6 or 8 years, it'll be people so sick of the repubs and ready for dems in congress again. (Once financial responsibility returns and the welfare state mindset goes away).
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That vile psychopath Pelosi going will be the first step towards fixing this country.
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does anyone else buy into the pendulum theory yet? And in another 6 or 8 years, it'll be people so sick of the repubs and ready for dems in congress again. (Once financial responsibility returns and the welfare state mindset goes away).
240, if you go back to when Barry was elected, I said the exact same thing when people like you (and James Carville) and others proclaimed that the Democrats would reign for 100 years with impunity. This has been happening for the last few decades like clockwork and it will continue to happen until ( if ever) there is a party that has both the Presidency and both houses where most of those elected are centrists and the country is stable and doing well financially. If that ever happened for a sustained period of time, there would be a virtual stranglehold of dominance enjoyed by one party.
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That vile psychopath Pelosi going will be the first step towards fixing this country.
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the dems are going to start running for the hills by Friday and the September jobs number hits. I'm hearing 9.9% and 10.1% in october.
If that is the case, I see Barry possibly resigning or simply telling the left to fuck off so he can save himself. I don't think he will do that, but its a possibility.
If it hits "officially" 10% again, that "@$$-whippin' of biblical proportions" that Michael Moore stated would happen to the Democrats is pretty much etched in stone.
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Democrats' Generic Ballot Poll Numbers Drop
First Posted: 08-30-10 06:19 PM | Updated: 08-30-10 06:19 PM
Source: HP
Two national polls released today and over the weekend report very different results leading to very different conclusions:
On Friday, under the headline "Democrats May Not Be Headed for Midterm Bloodbath," Newsweek reported results from a new national poll of registered voters showing Americans evenly split (45% to 45%) on the question of whether they would vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate for Congress in their district.
This afternoon, Gallup released another national survey of registered voters, also conducted last week, showing Republicans with an "unprecedented 10-point lead" (51% to 41%), the largest Republican advantage Gallup has measured in its nearly sixty years of tracking the so-called "generic ballot."
So what's going on?
Much of the gaping difference between the two polls is probably explained by the usual random variation that affects all polls. Use your mouse to poke around our interactive chart (posted below), and you will soon discover that the latest Gallup survey result is more favorable for the Republicans than most, the Newsweek poll is similarly more favorable for the Democrats and that both fall within the typical range of variation, amounting to +/- three or four points from the trend line. Our overall trend estimate based on all of the available polls gives Republicans a 5.2 percentage point advantage (46.8% to 41.6%)
We could obsess further over the consistent differences ("house effects") among pollsters, but what is far more important, is that the averages show a GOP lead that has been trending in the Republican direction all summer. That trend is consistent with the historical pattern identified here on Friday by political scientists Joe Bafumi, Bob Erikson and Chris Wlezien, the "electorate's tendency in past midterm cycles to gravitate further toward the "out" party over the election year."
Moreover, you see the same trend even if we drop all Newsweek and Gallup polls, plus all of the Internet-based surveys and automated surveys (including Rasmussen), and focus only on the remaining live-interviewer telephone surveys, as in the chart below. The margin for the Republicans is virtually identical (46.6% to 41.4%).
So while the "unprecedented 10-point lead" reported by Gallup probably exaggerates the Republican lead, any result showing a net Republican advantage on the so-called generic ballot is bad news for Democrats. Bafumi and his colleagues estimated their 50-seat gain for the Republicans assuming a two-point advantage for Republicans on the generic ballot, which they project will widen to a six-point lead by November. If the Republican lead on the generic ballot is already that wide (or close), their projection for the Democrats would worsen.
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RealClearPolitics HorseRaceBlog
By Jay Cost
« Will Money Save the Democrats? | HorseRaceBlog Home Page
August 31, 2010 Health Care Reform Has Endangered the Democratic Majority
This Politico piece by Jim VandeHei, Alex Isenstadt, and Mike Allen got a lot of play last week:
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Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day.
In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks.
They no longer believe the jobs and housing markets will recover -- or that anything resembling the White House's promise of a "recovery summer" is under way. They are even more concerned by indications that House Democrats once considered safe -- such as Rep. Betty Sutton, who occupies an Ohio seat that President Barack Obama won with 57 percent of the vote in 2008 -- are in real trouble.
There is no mention of health care reform in this piece. The economy is referenced several times. So is the President's inability to control the narrative. Even the Ground Zero Mosque is mentioned as a reason why the House is now in jeopardy. But not health care.
It has become conventional wisdom that the decline of the Democrats has mostly to do with the economy and little - if anything - to do with health care. This is Jonathan Alter from Saturday:
Health-care reform was seen by many cable chatterers as shaping the outcome of the November midterm elections but almost certainly won't. Nor will the flap over the planned mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero. To make sure, Obama defended the constitutional principle at stake, but backed off on the specific siting. Why get tied down by another hot-button distraction, especially one that keeps the Muslim story alive in ways that help no one but the media? The collapse of the Greek economy, by contrast, is an example of something real, not hyped by cable news, whose reverberations first spoiled Obama's PR plan for a "Recovery Summer" and now could sink the Democrats in the midterms.
So, Greek economy, yes. Health care...no?
This meme is wrong. The Democrats' control of the House did not become tenuous recently. At best, some of the more immediate warning signs - e.g. individual incumbents like Betty Sutton now appear to be in jeopardy - have manifested themselves recently. But there has been a real danger of losing the House for some time, a danger that predates "Recovery Summer" and goes back to the health care debate.
First of all, the fact that the health care bill is no longer the topic du jore does not mean it is no longer an issue. The real questions are whether the health care bill moved voters away from the Democrats, and whether those voters have since moved back now that the debate is over. The answers are yes - the debate moved voters away from the Democrats; and no - the voters have not come back.
Here is the 2009-2010 track of the RCP generic ballot average:
This metric historically has a Democratic tilt, yet it showed the two parties at parity a year ago. That was, you will recall, after Democratic incumbents were excoriated at town hall meetings all summer. Only about 40% of people supported the bill at that point. With the President's late summer speech to Congress, the Democratic generic ballot numbers ticked up, but the GOP pulled back to within even of the Democrats by mid-November, when the House was debating the bill.
All of this happened during the Third and Fourth Quarters of 2009, when GDP finally turned positive then jumped up by 5.0%.
It is very hard to win the House of Representatives when you lose the House popular vote. And the polls have suggested for a year that Democrats were in danger of doing just that.
It is also very hard to win the House of Representatives when Independents bolt to the other side en masse. Republicans and Democrats split Independents in the 2004 House elections. In 2006 they went for the Democrats by 18 points. They went for the Democrats by 8 points in 2008.
In Gallup's most recent polling, President Obama won the approval of just 40% of Independent adults. That's deep in the danger zone, and the President has been in trouble with Independents for some time. Independent adults have given him less than 50% approval in the Gallup poll since November, 2009. Again, that's when the economy was growing and the health care debate was on the front page. And that is among all adults. Among likely voters, Rasmussen found around that time that 60% of Independents disapproved of the President's performance, with 45% strongly disapproving.
We can also point to the 2009 off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, which occurred during the health care debate. Democrats suffered massive defections among Independent voters, bringing Republicans to victory in both states. Something similar happened in the Massachusetts Senate election. Republicans do not win New England Senate seats by bringing the conservative base out to the polls! Scott Brown is a United States Senator today because Independents in the Bay State were unhappy with the course the national government had been taking.
Partisans on both sides tell themselves stories about why they're up, why they're down, and why the other side is where it is. These stories usually contain at least a grain of truth, but they also help encourage ideologues in the face of an impending rejection by the electorate. Democrats ignored the political problem of health care in the fall and winter - arguing that Martha Coakley and Creigh Deeds were bad candidates, that voters had been turned off by the health care bill because of the process, and that they would come around once the many benefits kicked in. Now, they're pointing to the economy as the only significant reason why the party is in trouble.
It would be difficult for any strong partisan to admit that such an accomplishment was so deeply unpopular. Yet the polling is pretty unequivocal on the relationship between the Democrats' fortunes and the health care bill. It was during the health care debate that the essential building block of the Democratic majority - Independent voters - began to crumble. It was evident in the generic ballot. It was evident in the President's job approval numbers. It was evident in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
Reconstructing the Democrats' meme, we can fairly say that the economy is a huge problem for the party. Of this, there can be no doubt. We can also say that the stalled recovery denied the Democrats a chance to win back the voters they lost over health care. But the process and passage of health care reform were crucial elements in the story. That's when the party started losing the voters it needs to retain control of the government.
-Jay Cost
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But 240 told me the public loves ObamaCare. no?
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This guy is a big lib and even he is forecasting a tsunami.
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The Democrats’ New Normal
By NATE SILVER
www.nyt.com
I don’t usually like to comment on individual polls. Most of the time, when a poll produces an “unusual” result, it simply reflects random noise and the best advice is to wait for the next edition of the poll to come along, when more often than not it will revert to its previous position.
The poll stealing the headlines this morning is from Gallup, and for good reason: it gives the Republicans a whopping 10-point lead on the generic ballot. This is, in fact, an all-time record for the Republicans: Gallup has been conducting this survey for almost 70 years, and Republicans have never managed to have quite that large of an edge before.
The poll is probably an outlier of sorts, by which I mean that were you to take the exact same survey and put it into the field again — but interview 1,450 different registered voters, instead of the ones Gallup happened to survey — you would not likely find the G.O.P. with as large as a 10-point advantage. This week’s Rasmussen Reports generic ballot survey actually bounced back toward the Democrats somewhat (although still showing them with a 6-point deficit); polling averages have them trailing by around 5 points instead; and there was no specific news event last week that would have warranted such a large shift in voter preferences.
Still, even if the poll is an outlier, that doesn’t mean it should simply be dismissed. Instead, the question is: an outlier relative to what? If the Democrats’ true deficit on the generic ballot were 5 points, it would not be all that unusual to have a poll now and then that showed them trailing by 10-points instead, nor would it be so strange for a couple polls to show the race about tied. Indeed, that seems to be about where the generic ballot sits now. No non-Internet survey has shown the Democrats with a lead larger than 1 point on the generic ballot for over a month now, whereas their worst results of late seem to put them in the range of 10-11 points behind.
This is not the situation the Democrats’ faced earlier this summer, when the generic ballot was closer to even. Back then, a 5-point Republican lead on the generic ballot would have been pretty big news; now, it seems to be the new normal. I don’t say this cavalierly: FiveThirtyEight tracks the generic ballot pretty obsessively, as it’s used in several ways in our forecasting models, and the Democrats’ numbers have almost certainly undergone some further deterioration over the past few weeks.
Making matters worse still for Democrats, Gallup’s survey — and some other generic ballot polls — are still polling registered rather than likely voters, whereas its polls of likely voters are generally more reliable in midterm elections. At FiveThirtyEight, we’ve found that the gap between registered and likely voter polls this year is about 4 points in the Republicans’ favor — so a 10-point lead in a registered voter poll is the equivalent of about 14 points on a likely-voter basis. Thus, even if this particular Gallup survey was an outlier, it’s not unlikely that we’ll begin to see some 8-, 9-, 10-point leads for Republicans in this poll somewhat routinely once Gallup switches over to a likely voter model at some point after Labor Day — unless Democrats do something to get the momentum back.
The “good news” for the Democrats is that the generic ballot almost certainly isn’t the only metric you should look at when forecasting midterm elections, and the other salient statistical indicators, while poor for Democrats, are not quite this poor. More on that when we release our House model, which is forthcoming very soon.
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pendulum swings. it's good news - washington will get very little done for the next 2 years.
6 years, if palin runs and giftwraps a second obama terms. Anyone else, obama will lose.
Thats exactly what we want NOTHING to get done!!!!When nothing gets done the private sector is free to grow.Government kills everything!!!We need them to ALL go away and leave us alone!!
Now,once again you keep defending Obama.He has governed against the will of the American people.Name one thing he has done that had public support.One thing.Health care?Nope.GM bailout?Nope.Strimulus?Nope.This man rules against the will of the American people.
As the republicans did by putting us into unpopular wars,when you rule against Americans your out.Obama will cause this party to be out of power for years and as soon as the health care piece of shit law goes into effect it might be thirty or forty years.Even blacks will get pissed off if they cant get to a doctor.Thanks you democrats.
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Democrats face midterm meltdown
By Edward Luce in Washington
Source: Financial Times
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Barack Obama’s Democratic party faces a series of dramatic defeats at every level of government in Washington and beyond in the November midterm elections, according to leading analysts and opinion polls.
The University of Virginia’s widely monitored Crystal Ball will on Wednesday forecast sweeping setbacks on Capitol Hill and the loss of a clutch of state governorships on November 2.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Obama struggles to convince voters - Aug-30.Obama: Popularity peaks and troughs - Aug-26.Opinion: Obama is right on China - Aug-30.View from DC videos - Nov-11.In depth: The Obama presidency - Aug-06.In depth: US states of emergency - Jul-27..It follows a Gallup poll that showed the Republicans with a 10 percentage point lead over the Democrats – the widest margin in 68 years. Separately, a University of Buffalo paper has predicted a 51-seat gain for Republicans in November.
The Democrats have a 39-seat majority in the House of Representatives. Many believe Democratic control of the Senate is also at risk.
“Voters are going to deliver a big fat message to President Obama, which he will not want to hear,” said Larry Sabato, who runs Crystal Ball. “The Republican base is at least 50 degrees further to the right than where it was when Newt Gingrich took control of the House in 1994, so we would be looking at two years of absolutely nothing getting done on Capitol Hill.”
The numbers, which threaten Mr Obama with a “wave election” similar to those of 1994 and 2006, when Democrats wrested back control of the House after 12 years, also extend to key states.
According to local polls, Democrats are on course to lose the governorships of traditionally left-leaning states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania and may be vulnerable in Illinois, long a party bastion.
Such is the scale of the expected losses that analysts are already focused on how Mr Obama can turn Republican domination to his advantage in his 2012 re-election race.
Washington is awash with speculation on whether the Republicans will over-reach as Mr Gingrich did in 1995 when Bill Clinton won a stand-off that had resulted in the shutdown of government.
“The political environment for Democrats is now every bit as poisonous as it was for them in 1994 and for Republicans in 2006,” said Charlie Cook, the widely tracked electoral forecaster.
The expected groundswell is driven by the composition of voter turnout, which at about 40 per cent would be significantly lower than the 63 per cent that brought Mr Obama to power. According to polls, likely Republican voters are twice as motivated to vote as Democrats.
That “enthusiasm gap” was on display last weekend at the Tea Party movement’s rally in Washington.
Recent polls show that 61 per cent of Americans “always or usually” live from pay cheque to pay cheque, up from 49 per cent in 2008.
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I really sense a beat down on the horizon. Has nothing to with trends, etc. It's simply Obama doing a lousy job as president, Congress stinking up the place, and there being no real economic improvement. There will likely be huge losses for Democrats in November because this Congress sucks. There likely be turnover in 2012 because Obama can't handle the job and the majority of the country disagrees with what he is doing.
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Now,once again you keep defending Obama.
No, I do not. I keep saying that - for his own possibly twisted political ideology - he is accomplishing a shitload of his goals.
Just as Bush (when he had congress) got many of his tasks thru - mainly giving control of norad to cheney right before 911, then starting 2 wars.
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Obama's Indifference Spells Dems' Disaster
Townhall.com ^ | September 1, 2010 | Donald Lambro
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WASHINGTON -- President Obama came out to the White House Rose Garden Monday on his first full day back at work to devote a full four minutes to the sinking U.S. economy.
Even though a president's time is valuable, considering the ever-weakening $14 trillion economy that has slowed to a crawl, it wasn't much. But with his 1930s-style economic policies in shambles, voters up in arms over the prospect that things will not be getting better anytime soon and a new Gallup poll that suggests his party is going to get walloped in the midterm elections, his advisers said he had to do something.
He has stubbornly stuck to his spending stimulus game plan and insisted to NBC News anchor Brian Williams on Sunday that, well, at least "the economy is growing." And he put in another pitch for his impotent $30 billion small-business assistance bill that is languishing in the Senate. It wasn't much, but Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "There's only so much that can be done."
In his four-minute remarks, Obama recited the now familiar litany of what he's done so far. But now his advisers are demanding he had to do more because clearly his spending stimulus plan isn't working, and for the first time he acknowledged that he and his team were "discussing additional measures" to spur faster growth and new jobs, including "further tax cuts." One would like to think that with 15 to 20 million Americans looking for full-time work and economic growth slowing to the mid-1 percent range and barely breathing, that Obama is growing impatient with the pace of the economy. But he hasn't shown that thus far, insisting that the recovery is growing modestly and is now in a recovery. White House officials call this "the recovery summer."
Yet when Obama walked into the Oval Office Monday he was greeted by a new Gallup poll that showed the Republicans now lead by 51 percent to 41 percent among registered voters in the polling firm's weekly tracking. Gallup said that the 10-point lead "is the GOP's largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress" going back to 1942.
In other words, Obama's party isn't just facing major losses at the polls in November, it's facing a bloodbath that could turn over control of both houses of Congress to Republicans that would bring the administration to a screeching halt and set the stage for making him a one-term president. It is hard to remember when a White House was so disconnected from the growing disapproval of a presidency and the severity of an economic situation teetering on the brink of a second recession.
Until Obama's return from his Martha's Vineyard vacation, he was insisting the economy was still "heading in the right direction," when, in fact, the revised GDP economic growth rate had plunged in the second quarter from 2.4 percent to a comatose 1.6 percent, unemployment claims were climbing, and the stock market was in a steep decline.
Harvard economist Paul Krugman, a liberal cheerleader for the president's $800 billion spending stimulus (although he believed it should be much bigger) now complains the government's present policies have "landed us in what looks increasingly like a permanent state of stagnation and high unemployment."
"It's time to admit that what we have now isn't a recovery, and do whatever we can to change that situation," Krugman wrote in his New York Times column last week.
Diehard Democratic economist Laura Tyson, a member of the White House's Economic Advisory Board, doesn't think the stimulus has worked, either, but she is calling for another spending stimulus bill.
Despite growing alarm among voters and throughout the business community about the administration's unending trillion-dollar budget deficits, Tyson dismisses them out of hand. There is "far too much focus on the deficit" and "too much worry about the size of government," she complains. This is the kind of advice Obama has been getting from his advisers on his economic and fiscal policies.
And it's going to get much worse, economists say. The jobless rate is expected to creep closer to 10 percent as employers hang on to their cash reserves, hoping to survive the long-term decline in the Obama economy. Growing numbers of workers are tapping their retirement funds just to get by. "In July alone, 381,000 adults chose to quit looking for work altogether, and that trend will continue in President Obama's land of dashed dreams and squandered opportunities," writes University of Maryland Business School economist Peter Morici.
Democratic lawmakers will be returning after Labor Day from their August recess with tales of an angry electorate, with many avoiding face-to-face town hall gatherings because of it.
"Democrats thought things couldn't get much worse on the electoral front -- and then they went home to campaign," the Politico website reports this week. "The Gallop poll, coming at the end of a brutal August for Democrats and Obama, reinforces the rapidly forming prevailing view that the horizon is as bleak for Democrats as it ever has been."
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Why don't these idiots understand that people don't want a Marxian revolution?
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does anyone else buy into the pendulum theory yet? And in another 6 or 8 years, it'll be people so sick of the repubs and ready for dems in congress again. (Once financial responsibility returns and the welfare state mindset goes away).
Absolutely... we continue to think the grass is greener on the other side... when in fact the government is the only ones allowed on the grass while we watch from the porch of our dilapidated shanty
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Absolutely... we continue to think the grass is greener on the other side... when in fact the government is the only ones allowed on the grass while we watch from the porch of our dilapidated shanty
52 consecutive months of job growth under Bush and republicans,killed the day Pelosi took over the congress.
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52 consecutive months of job growth under Bush and republicans,killed the day Pelosi took over the congress.
I said to my GF the minute Pelosi took over we were royally screwed beyond comprehension and I was not wrong.
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Dems get more bad news in Gallup poll
Posted: September 1st, 2010
From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney
Nancy Pelosi and House Dems get low marks on several issues.
(CNN) - It's the latest sign congressional Democrats could be in for a rough round of midterms.
A new Gallup/USA Today survey out Wednesday finds Americans think Republicans in Congress will do a better job than Democrats in handling seven out of nine key issues.
The biggest divide is on the issue of terrorism, where Republicans get the edge by a wide 55-31 percent margin. Republicans also win big on immigration (50-35 percent), federal spending (50-35 percent), and even the economy (49-38 percent) - despite Democratic efforts to paint the recession's onset as the fault of congressional Republicans and former President George W. Bush.
Republicans also win on the issue of Afghanistan (45-38 percent), jobs (46-41 percent), and even corruption in government (38-35 percent) - a problem that has plagued both parties over the past two years.
Democrats may find a small glimmer of hope in health care where Americans are essentially split on which party is best equipped to tackle that issue. But health care has historically been a Democratic strong point (a year ago the party enjoyed an 11-point advantage on the issue) and the fact that neither party can now claim a clear stake on the subject may actually prove to be more good news for the GOP.
The only issue Democrats still reign supreme is on that the environment, where the party holds a clear 54-31 percent advantage. Though this may prove to have little resonance at the polls, considering a recent CNN survey showed only 1 in 4 voters mark the environment as the most important issue to their vote.
The latest Gallup survey comes two days after the organization's daily tracking survey showed Republicans 10 points ahead of Democrats in a generic matchup – numbers that marked the fifth straight week the Republicans have held an advantage on the question. The 10-point margin is also the party's largest lead ever in midterm contests in Gallup's polling history.
In average of several recent generic matchup polls shows the GOP with a single digit lead, but still virtually in the same position it was at the same time in 1994 – the year the party grabbed 54 House seats back from the Democrats, enough to win control of the chamber.
Gallup surveyed 1,021 adults by telephone from August 27-30. The sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/01/trending-dems-get-more-bad-news-in-gallup-poll/
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52 consecutive months of job growth under Bush and republicans,killed the day Pelosi took over the congress.
Soooo, all America needs to fix everything is to have a Republican President and Majority Republican congress in your opinions?
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Soooo, all America needs to fix everything is to have a Republican President and Majority Republican congress in your opinions?
No - we need to kneecap both parties so they can't do squat.
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Charlie Cook: Repubs will take House and maybe Senate as well
Fox News Channel | 9/1/10
Charlie Cook on Fox:
Republicans will win 50-60 new seats and take control of House; Repubs are in reach of 50-51 seats in Senate
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Even the Democrats are proclaiming the House to already be lost. And I think it is safe to say that the Republians have a better chance of taking the Senate than they could have ever hoped they would have had.
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Even the Democrats are proclaiming the House to already be lost. And I think it is safe to say that the Republians have a better chance of taking the Senate than they could have ever hoped they would have had.
The GOP taking the Senate would be beyond delightful, if for no other reason than to see the complete meltdown of the far left.
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I hope they get it too... then.... when they fail to do what they say... we can vote in the democrats and start this thread all over again...rinse and repeat
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I'd like to see Democrats keep the House and Republicans take the Senate. Would slow down the spending train and help keep people like Kagan off the Supreme Court.
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I'd like to see Democrats keep the House and Republicans take the Senate. Would slow down the spending train and help keep people like Kagan off the Supreme Court.
Hell no! I want Pelosi gone now. That disgusting wench needs to go.
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Hell no! I want Pelosi gone now. That disgusting wench needs to go.
Not a Pelosi fan, but I think the Senate can do more damage than the House.
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August 31, 2010, 5:20 pm How Did Democrats Get Here?
By NATE SILVER
www.nyt.com
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We talked this morning about the Democrats’ poor electoral position — already shaky, it is probably now deteriorating further — but we haven’t talked as much about why they are in this predicament. This is for a good reason: once you get past the premise that the state of the economy plays a large role (something that pretty much everyone would agree with), this is a difficult question to answer.
The reasons for the Democrats’ decline are, as we say in the business, overdetermined. That is, there are no lack of hypotheses to explain it: lots of causes for this one effect. The economy? Sure. Unpopular legislation like health care? Yep. Some “bad luck” events like the Gulf Oil spill? Mmm-hmm. The new energy breathed into conservatives by the Tea Party movement? Uh-huh.
And this hardly exhausts the theories. An inexperienced White House that has sometimes been surprisingly inept at coping with the 24/7 news media cycle? The poor optics associated with Democrats having had a filibuster-proof majority in theory, but not always in practice? All of the above.
These causes can’t be so easily untangled on the basis of polling evidence; there’s really no basis on which to evaluate the competing hypotheses. This is particularly so given that different types of political events aren’t isolated from one another — health care reform might have been unpopular, for instance, but the reason for its unpopularity may ultimately have been the economy.
For this reason, we can be skeptical of two types of analysis: claiming that Factor X definitely isn’t contributing to the Democrats’ troubles, and asserting that it definitely is. For instance, I’d urge some caution in reading this article at Real Clear Politics by Jay Cost — which rightly critiques those who have entirely dismissed the role that health care played in the Democrats’ decline, but probably goes too far in arguing the contrary. Mr. Cost is right, for instance, that the Democrats’ decline in the polls was steepest last summer, when the health care debate began — but when one delves in a little deeper, the timing of the sharpest periods of decline do not line up well with specific events in the health care debate.
Does that mean Mr. Cost is wrong? Not at all. Health care dominated the political discourse for about nine months; it seems implausible that it hasn’t played some role. But he hasn’t offered much in the way of proof — nor is there much of it to be had: overdetermined phenomena usually beget underdetermined attempts to explain them.
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Bigger Than 1994
By Sean Trende - September 2, 2010
www.realclearpolitics.co m
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There has been a flurry of political stories in recent weeks about the electoral difficulties Democrats face this fall. It seems Washington is finally catching on to the fact that the Democrats' hold on the House is in dire jeopardy, and that a 1994-style, 52-seat pickup is a real possibility.
But this should not come as a surprise, as the data have been pointing to Democratic losses in the 50-seat range in the House for some time now. Washington continues to be disconnected from the political reality that the polls and the electorate have been sending consistently over the past year. After all, the deterioration in Democratic fortunes has not just recently put the House in play. In a piece written in April, I explored how bad things could get for Democrats:
So how bad could 2010 get for the Democrats? Let me say upfront that I tend to agree with analysts who argue that if we move into a "V"-shaped recovery and President Obama's job approval improves, Democratic losses could be limited to twenty or twenty-five seats.
That said, I think those who suggest that the House is barely in play, or that we are a long way from a 1994-style scenario are missing the mark. A 1994-style scenario is probably the most likely outcome at this point. Moreover, it is well within the realm of possibility - not merely a far-fetched scenario - that Democratic losses could climb into the 80 or 90-seat range.
The country has not enjoyed a "V"-shaped recovery; rather, economic analysts are now seriously debating whether a double-dip recession is coming. President Obama's job approval ratings have declined, rather than improved. The Democratic party's standing in the generic ballot has declined as well.
From that same piece in April:
The RCP Average has Republicans leading Democrats by 2.8 points on the generic ballot test. That should equate roughly to a 225-seat Republican majority (Republicans won the national vote by 5 points in 1994), which would almost represent a 50-seat pickup.
But many of these polls survey registered voters. Polling among likely voters, such as Rasmussen Reports, shows Republicans up by about 8-10 points, which would probably represent a seventy-seat pickup.
And the polls of the most highly energized voters are even worse for Democrats. Recent NBC/WSJ polling found that Democrats led by three points among registered voters. But among those most interested in the November elections, Republicans led by 13 points.
This reminds me of the polling that showed Martha Coakley up 15 points in early January, but which also showed her and Scott Brown tied among those most interested in the race.
In reality, barring some major and dramatic turnaround in the political landscape, the 50 seat GOP wave has now in many ways moved closer to the floor for Democratic losses. With the economy continuing to flounder and with fewer than 60 days until Election Day, the potential for a once-in-a-century type of wave that would lead to GOP gains in the 60-90 seat range is increasing.
The latest Gallup generic ballot tracking finds that, among registered voters, Republicans are leading by ten points, 51 percent to 41 percent. Three of the four highest leads for the GOP since Gallup began tracking the generic ballot in 1942 have been measured in the past month alone (and Republicans won the House seven times during those intervening years, with as many as 246 seats which would be a 68 seat pickup today).
Moreover, this is a poll of registered voters. This poll only partially accounts for a massive 25-point "enthusiasm gap" between the parties (highly enthusiastic partisans are more likely to answer a phone and sit through a survey). If Gallup had been using a likely voter screen, it would likely have shown upwards of a 14 point lead for the GOP. The last time a party won the national vote by fourteen points was in 1964, when the Democrats won 295 seats in Congress (in 1974 they won the national vote by 17 points and won 291 seats).
Nor is this cherry-picking the data. The RCP Generic Ballot Average, which is predominately comprised of registered voter polls, for the Democrats currently stands at a +4.8 percent edge for the Republicans. That probably translates to a 8 to 10 point edge for Republicans among the actual electorate.
What makes this election cycle so devastating for the Democrats is that the Republicans have had their numbers reduced so severely in the past two cycles. Republicans were reduced to 42.5 percent of the popular vote in 2008 - their lowest total since 1974. Their share of the two party vote (i.e. just Republicans and Democrats) was 44.5 percent. Even a dead-cat bounce in a neutral environment would have netted the Republicans twenty seats after plumbing those depths.
As a result, if the GOP were to win the national vote by ten points this year - again, roughly what the RCP Average suggests when transformed into a likely voter model - that would represent over a ten point gain for the GOP over the course of a single election. A gain in the popular vote of that magnitude in a single cycle hasn't occurred since 1932, when Democrats jumped from 45.9 percent of the popular vote to 56.2 percent of the popular vote, netting 97 seats in the process.
There is one danger for Republicans here. The high enthusiasm gap means that their base voters are extremely likely to vote. But turning out new voters in places like the Birmingham suburbs (R+29) or Midland/Odessa (R+28) does the GOP no good in House races, although in certain states it could have a significant effect on Senate and Governor races.
In other words, Republicans might have a very inefficient vote distribution. This problem continually afflicted the GOP in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Republicans came very close to winning the national popular vote in 1966 (1 point), 1968 (2 points), 1972 (4 points), 1980 (3 points), and 1986 (3 points). Yet they never won more than 44% of the seats in Congress, because their vote was concentrated in a few districts. A similar effect could potentially deny the GOP the truly massive gains that a double-digit national vote victory would suggest.
Right now, the idea of gains in excess of 60 seats for the GOP is unthinkable to many. Gains of that magnitude haven't happened in over 80 years. But unthinkability is not evidence. What actual evidence we have reminds us that no political party has hit the trifecta of a lousy economy, an opposition at its nadir (in terms of seat loss), and an overly ambitious Presidential agenda in over 80 years. All these macro factors are pointing to a massive GOP blowout, and they will not be changing between now and November. The Democrats need to hope that the micro factors save them from a once-in-a-century storm.
Sean Trende is Senior Elections Analyst for RealClearPolitics. He can be reached at strende@realclearpolitics.com.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/02/bigger_than_1994_106985.html at September 02, 2010 - 08:30:15 AM CDT
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Caddell on the Midterm Elections
NRO ^ | September 2, 2010 | Robert Costa
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The polling figures paint an astounding picture -- and not just for Democrats, but for the political class as a whole.
In Jimmy Carter’s White House, Patrick Caddell was, in the words of Teddy White, the “house Cassandra” — an all-too-candid pollster whose prophecies spooked the president’s other advisors. Three decades later, Caddell again is warning his fellow Democrats about electoral doom. As he sips an iced tea over lunch in midtown Manhattan, Caddell sighs and tells me that the lessons of the Carter years appear to be all but forgotten by the current crop of Democrats in Washington.
“President Obama’s undoing may be his disingenuousness,” Caddell says. After campaigning for post-partisanship, Obama, he observes, has lurched without pause to the left. “You can’t get this far from what you promised,” Caddell says, “especially when people invest in hope — you must understand that obligation. The killer in American politics is disappointment. When you are elected on expectations, and you fail to meet them, your decline steepens.”
In 1979, as Carter’s poll numbers slid south amidst a sagging economy, Caddell drafted a memo to the president urging him to recognize that the nation was “deep in crisis.” Gazing upon today’s electoral landscape, Caddell paints an even bleaker picture. “We may be at a pre-revolutionary moment,” he says, unsmiling. “Everything is in motion.” This November, he predicts, “will be more of a national referendum than any [midterm election] since Watergate.”
The polling data show how restless the country is. “A Rasmussen poll from earlier this year showed just 21 percent of voters believing that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed — an astounding figure,” Caddell says. “Then a CNN poll showed that 56 percent of Americans worried that the federal government poses a direct threat to their freedom.”
“Democrats are aware of this,” Caddell continues. “They know that the general outcome is baked.” As the fall campaign kicks into gear, “the question now becomes whether Obama can mitigate their losses. You see them trying to localize their campaigns and pretending that they don’t know Nancy Pelosi. It’s all rather amusing.”
Unlike President Reagan at his first-term midpoint, in 1982, “Obama is not able to go out there and say, ‘Stay the course.’ That’s just not possible. The Democrats’ hope with health care was that ‘people will like it after we pass it.’ Well, they hate it, and you don’t see any effort to promote it. The Democrats had a chance to do this right — most people supported aspects of reform — but because of the way it was passed, as a crime against democracy, the country has simply not accepted it. The lies, the browbeating, the ‘deem and pass’ — all of it was a suicide mission.”
On Monday, Gallup released a new weekly poll showing Republicans leading Democrats by an unprecedented ten-point margin, 51 to 41 percent, in congressional voting preferences — the largest gap in Gallup’s history of tracking the midterm generic ballot. “I have never seen numbers like this,” Caddell says, shaking his head. “Unless Republicans can find some way to screw it up, they will win big, even though nobody really likes them, either.”
Indeed, rather than a ringing endorsement of either major party, Caddell sees November as a broader referendum on the political class — the class, he says, to which Obama, and his political fate, are irrevocably tied.
“Democrats used to be the voice of the common man in America, not his dictator,” Caddell laments. “Now, with Wall Street, their mantra is, ‘We’ll take your money, but we won’t kiss.’ The people who own the party — George Soros, the Center for American Progress, the public-employee union bosses, rich folks flying private jets to ‘ideas festivals’ in Aspen — they’re Obama’s base.”
Though Obama is bruised, Caddell is quick to note that he is far from finished — a point, he says, that Republicans prefer to whisper in the backroom. He points to Obama’s summer strategy — a serious-minded speech on Iraq, a trip to New Orleans to address the rebuilding efforts — as evidence that the president is “attempting to be presidential, which is the best thing he can do politically.” Carter, he observes, took a similar approach in 1978 — focusing on the Camp David Accords and beefing up his foreign-policy portfolio. As Caddell recalls, he advised the president that it was important not simply to govern, but to lead. By October 1978, the Georgian’s approval numbers had begun to tick up, and the Democrats lost only a handful of seats in the House and Senate.
“With Carter, I would argue that his failures were not of the heart or of intent, but, perhaps, of execution,” Caddell says. “He was never inconsistent with what he originally envisioned. I can’t say the same for Obama.” Successful presidents, Caddell argues, “realize that it is not about them — that the country is bigger than their presidency. With Obama, it is always about him. It’s a terrible thing to have to say, but I think that it has become obvious.”
Can Obama soften the blow at the eleventh hour? Caddell says it will be tough. Any efforts by Obama to right his ship, he says, will still face an electorate largely uninterested in new West Wing talking points or presidential maneuvers. Caddell believes that 2010 will be a louder, more raucous moment than 1978 in American politics. “The discontent is much larger than the turnout at Glenn Beck rallies,” he says. “A sea of anger is churning — the tea parties are but the tip of the iceberg. People say they want to take their country back, and, to the Democrats’ chagrin, they’re very serious about it.”
As we part, Caddell, once the dashing young star of Democratic presidential politics as an advisor to George McGovern, Carter, and Gary Hart, acknowledges that his criticisms may ruffle some feathers or simply be shrugged off by Democratic leaders. Still, he says, it is important to sound the alarm.
After all these years, Caddell laughs, “I know my role. I’m like Toto in the Wizard of Oz. My job is to pull back the curtain to reveal the little man with the microphone.”
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The Democrats’ hope with health care was that ‘people will like it after we pass it.’ Well, they hate it, and you don’t see any effort to promote it. The Democrats had a chance to do this right — most people supported aspects of reform — but because of the way it was passed, as a crime against democracy, the country has simply not accepted it. The lies, the browbeating, the ‘deem and pass’ — all of it was a suicide mission.”
240 - disagrees.
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GOP just has to find a way to keep this momentum. Wasn't gore down by 15 or 20 points in summer 2000, then lost in a nailbiter? Didn't mcain lead at this exact point in 2008 - then lost by a shitload?
Repubs can't get complacent "we're gonna win 70 seats!" then stay home.
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GOP just has to find a way to keep this momentum. Wasn't gore down by 15 or 20 points in summer 2000, then lost in a nailbiter? Didn't mcain lead at this exact point in 2008 - then lost by a shitload?
Repubs can't get complacent "we're gonna win 70 seats!" then stay home.
mid Terms are different since only the die-hards come out.
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Republicans Hold Wide Lead in Key Voter Turnout MeasureRepublican advantage in "thought given to election" greatly exceeds that for past midterms
by Lydia Saad
www.gallup.com
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PRINCETON, NJ -- Two months before this year's midterm congressional elections, Gallup finds 54% of Republicans, compared with 30% of Democrats, already saying they have given "quite a lot of" or "some" thought to the contests.
This "thought" measure is an important variable in Gallup's well-established classification of "likely voters," which is put into use closer to Election Day. The current gulf in thought between the parties mirrors the partisan gap in Gallup's voter enthusiasm measure that is tracked weekly.
Republicans' current level of thought about the elections, from Gallup Daily tracking conducted Aug. 23-29, matches or exceeds that found in October/November of the last three midterm years. By contrast, Democrats are giving far less thought to the elections today than they did in the final weeks before the prior four midterms. As a result, Democrats are on par with independents in current attention levels -- a sharp departure from recent years, when the Democrats exceeded independents on this measure.
The large party gap in "thought" suggests the typical Republican turnout advantage could be larger than usual this year if that gap persists until Election Day. Attention normally spikes as elections approach, and this is likely to occur among Democrats. However, it is unclear whether the Republicans have reached the limit for how much attention they will pay to a midterm election, or whether their attention will rise to perhaps a historic level by November. How this plays out will determine Democrats' ability to catch up to Republicans on this measure before Election Day, and will in turn determine the size of the Republican turnout advantage.
Conservative Republicans on High Alert
The extraordinary level of attention conservative Republicans (including Republican-leaning independents) are paying to the election is much of the reason Republicans' current attention dwarfs Democrats'. Sixty-three percent of conservative Republicans say they have given quite a lot of or some thought to the upcoming elections, roughly twice the proportion of moderate and liberal Republicans (34%), and liberal Democrats (32%).
Conservative Republicans were much closer to moderates and liberals of both parties on this measure in October/November of prior midterms. Also, only in 1994 did Gallup find a higher percentage of conservative Republicans paying quite a lot of or some attention to the elections than are doing so today. But with two months to go before the 2010 midterms, conservatives will likely match or exceed that record by Election Day.
Bottom Line
Gallup's "thought given to the elections" indicator of voter turnout suggests that, if the midterm elections were held today, the Republicans would have a substantial advantage over the Democrats in turnout -- largely because of the attentiveness of conservative Republicans. This would well exceed the typical turnout advantage Republicans enjoy in midterm elections, including 1994, when the GOP gained a historically large number of House seats.
It's a virtual certainty that voters' attention to the election will increase in the coming months. If this increase is proportionate between Republicans and Democrats, then the Republicans will likely maintain a formidable turnout advantage. However, it's also possible that Republicans have merely tuned in early to the elections, leaving less room for their attention to expand -- and thus giving the Democrats an opportunity to narrow the gap by November.
Explore more Gallup data relating to the upcoming congressional midterm elections, including Gallup's complete generic ballot trend since 1950, in our Election 2010 key indicators interactive.
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WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wisconsin and west VA now in play.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/senate/wi/wisconsin_senate_feingold_vs_johnson-1577.html
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WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wisconsin and west VA now in play.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/senate/wi/wisconsin_senate_feingold_vs_johnson-1577.html
When you were a kid, did you ever get that feeling after doing something wrong, that you just KNEW your mother was going to get medieval on your behind?
The liberals can just feel their backsides clinching now. They know it's coming, that "@$$-whippin' of biblical proportions" that Michael Moore mentioned.
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only makes for better TV
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Those polls at RCP are unreal. The stupid outliers like Danny posted only register RV voters not likely voters.
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only makes for better TV
RCP is the best site bar none. That is my Numero Uno go to site on politics.
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WOW!
If this holds true - this will be historic.
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/generic_congressional_vote-901.html
Generic Congressional Vote
Polling Data
Poll Date Sample Republicans Democrats Spread
RCP Average 9/19 - 10/3 -- 47.8 42.2 Republicans +5.6
Rasmussen Reports 9/27 - 10/3 3500 LV 45 42 Republicans +3
Gallup (LV Higher Turnout)* 9/23 - 10/3 1882 LV 53 40 Republicans +13
Gallup (LV Lower Turnout)* 9/23 - 10/3 1882 LV 56 38 Republicans +18
Newsweek 9/29 - 9/30 902 RV 43 48 Democrats +5
FOX News 9/28 - 9/29 900 RV 44 38 Republicans +6
CNN/Opinion Research 9/21 - 9/23 506 LV 53 44 Republicans +9
Politico/GWU/Battleground 9/19 - 9/22 1000 LV 47 42 Republicans +5
See All Generic Congressional Vote Polling Data
*Gallup's "Lower Turnout" and "Higher Turnout" Likely Voter models are weighted at 50%, so that the survey only counts once in the RCP Generic Average.
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Gallup’s astonishing numbers and the Lake Superior congressional districts
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
10/04/10 11:55 PM EDT
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Late yesterday, Gallup came out with new numbers on the generic ballot question—which party’s candidates would you vote for in the election for House of Representatives? Among registered voters Gallup shows Republicans ahead by 46%-42%, about as good a score as Republicans have ever had (and about as bad a score as Democrats have ever had) since Gallup started asking the question in 1942.
However, Gallup also shows the results for two different turnout models. Under its “high turnout model” Republicans lead 53%-40%. Under its “low turnout model” Republicans lead 56%-38%.
These two numbers, if translated into popular votes in the 435 congressional districts, suggest huge gains for Republicans and a Republican House majority the likes of which we have not seen since the election cycles of 1946 or even 1928. For months, people have been asking me if this year looks like ’94. My response is that the poll numbers suggest it looks like 1994, when Republicans gained 52 seats in a House of 435 seats. Or perhaps somewhat better for Republicans and worse for Democrats. The Gallup high turnout and low turnout numbers suggest it looks like 1894, when Republicans gained more than 100 seats in a House of approximately 350 seats.
Having said that, caution is in order. Gallup’s numbers tend to be volatile. Its procedures for projecting likely turnout are very sensitive to transitory responses. They’re useful in identifying shifts in the balance of enthusiasm. But they can overstate the swings to one party or the other. Scott Rasmussen’s latest generic ballot numbers among likely voters show Republicans with only a 45%-42% lead, much less than the 48%-38% lead he reported two days ago. That’s based on a three-day average, indicating Democrats fared relatively well on the most recent night of interviewing. Perhaps Barack Obama’s attempts to gin up enthusiasm among Democratic voters are bearing fruit. Or perhaps one night’s results were an anomaly. Polling theory tells us that at least one out of 20 polls is simply wrong, that is, the results differ from what you would get from interviewing the entire population by more than the margin of error.
The realclearpolitics.com average of recent generic ballot polls, with the Gallup likely voter results factored in, shows Republicans ahead by 48%-42%, which is similar to what we’ve seen for the past week or two.
But we do keep seeing poll results from surprising districts that tend to support the Gallup results. Last week I pointed to a poll (from a pollster I don’t know) showing an even race in North Carolina 7 between Republican Ilario Pantano and 14-year Democratic incumbent Mike McIntyre, who won his 2008 race, in which he had an active Republican opponent, with 69% of the vote. Now Ed Morrissey directs our attention to a poll by Public Opinion Strategies, a highly respected Republican firm, in Minnesota 8 showing 36-year incumbent James Oberstar leading Republican challenger Chip Cravaacke by only 45%-42%, within the margin of error.
John McCormack has a good post in the Weekly Standard’s blog on this. Oberstar was first elected in 1974, he is Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and has brought public dollars to an economically chronically ailing district. He was reelected in 2008 with 68% of the vote. But this is also a district that, despite containing the Democratic strongholds of Duluth and much of the Iron Range (both in St. Louis County) that voted only 53% for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008. However, at its southern end it includes Isanti and Chisago Counties, exurban counties in the Twin Cities metro area, which despite a Democratic heritage have trended away from Democrats in recent elections—toward Jesse Ventura in 1998 and toward Republicans between 2000 and 2008, when they both voted for John McCain.
Minnesota 8 has a certain historic resonance for Democrats. It was one of only two or three districts (I am away from my desk where I have my papers and sources on this) which in the Republican landslide year of 1946 switched from a Republican to a Democratic congressman. This was a move away from progressive and isolationist Republicans (like Alvin O’Konski in the adjoining then-10th District of Wisconsin) toward labor-backed Democrats (completed in the Wisconsin case by the victory of young Democrat David Obey over O’Konski when they were redistricted together in 1972). Only two Democrats have represented Minnesota 8 ever since, John Blatnik, first elected in 1946 and for whom Oberstar worked as a staffer, and since 1974 Oberstar; only one Democrat, David Obey, has represented what is now Wisconsin 7 since 1969. For Oberstar to have a serious challenge, much less to be in danger of defeat, is quite astonishing. If these numbers are right—and like all poll numbers they are subject to some degree of doubt—they tend to confirm the Gallup likely voter numbers.
As for Obey, he has chosen to retire this year at age 72, and Republican Sean Duffy is waging a serious campaign for the district. These are two American congressional districts that touch on Lake Superior, that huge and cold forboding body of water over which the great freighters filled with iron ore have sailed in the ice-free months, from Duluth to the steel factories in Gary, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo. In the third of these districts, Michigan 1, Republican Dan Benishek looks like the favorite to take the district being vacated by Democrat Bart Stupak.