Bad News for Republicans
By amba | Related entries in Elections, General PoliticsIn a nationwide Times/Bloomberg poll:
The poll contained ominous findings for the Republican House and Senate majorities as the midterm elections approached.
Although President Bush’s job approval rating was essentially unchanged from his 38% showing last month, the new poll found Democrats opening double-digit leads on the key measures of voters’ early preferences for the November balloting.
Democrats lead Republicans 49% to 35% among registered voters who were asked which party they intended to support in their congressional districts this fall. When registered voters were asked which party they hoped would control the House and Senate after the midterm election, 51% picked the Democrats and 38% the GOP.
On both questions, independent voters preferred Democrats by ratios of about 3 to 1 or more.
The Republicans “don’t have it anymore,” said Alfred Smith, an independent in Bucks County, Pa., who runs a printing company. “They don’t trust each other. They don’t look like they are all together anymore.”
Forecasting the effects of these broad national attitudes on the results in individual congressional contests is an imperfect science. Republicans could be helped this fall because relatively few House districts are closely balanced between the parties, and many of the key Senate races are in states that already lean toward the GOP.
Even so, the Democratic advantage found in the poll is nearly three times the advantage Republicans had in 1994 when they made landslide gains in congressional elections.
The L.A. Times article notes that the gender gap has reopened as well: men split pretty evenly between the parties, but women go Democratic 57% to 31%, and that “commanding advantage” also holds among married women, who broke Republican in 2004.
I’ll refrain from my usual snarky comment wondering how the Democrats are going to blow it.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 and is filed under Elections, General Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 13th, 2006 at 10:31 am
It’s amazing to me how the GOP is now racing with the Dems to the edge of the cliff.
As I’ve mentioned before, the straw that finally breaks the GOP camel’s back may well turn out to be something few people expected. The proposed Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, soon due to come before the full House, may be a possibility. Why this bill? Well, consider the “11 million illegal immigrants” figure so often bandied about in the immigration debate. Well, there are an estimated 70 million Americans who are at least casual Internet gamblers of some sort – and unlike the illegal immigrants, most of them are eligible and active voters. I’d hazard that a large chunk of them are either independents or libertarians who, at least until now, leaned Republican. That’s a lot of votes for the GOP to jeopardize, not just in this election but future ones, by treating regular people like criminals.
As for George W. Bush, well, I’ve already sounded off about him.
April 13th, 2006 at 10:34 am
Hopefully this isn’t another one of those classic 40(D)-33(I)-27(R) polls that tend to show up whenever Democrats want to use polling data.
Polls are ultimately meaningless, it is the election that counts.
April 13th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
[...] Donklephant has some bad news for Republicans. [...]
April 13th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Brian, Polls are random. Are you implying that since Bush is doing poorly in public opinion, that it is some Liberal plot to Bring down Bush? You’ve been listening to Bill O’Reily too much.
April 13th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Unless the Fates intervene in a big way, I’ll predict we’re going to see Democratic majorities in Congress by the end of this year. Which means the next two years will be taken up, rightly or not, with an endless mother-of-all-investigating-committees romp through the White House record of the past five years. That should consume all the national energy and media wattage for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, while we pillow-fight, the rest of the world will continue to exist and evolve. Or mutate. Come 2008, we’ll have to notice it again. If not sooner.
Blame who you will.
April 14th, 2006 at 9:49 am
If the Democrats do take control of Cokngress and launch multiple investigations, I’m sure the Republicans will scream that they’re only being vindictive. Perhaps such investigations wouldn’t be necessary if the Republican Congress had made even a half-hearted effort to exercise their oversight responsibilities. Don’t blame the Democrats. blame Pat Roberts and friends.
April 23rd, 2006 at 10:02 am
The Bush Legacy will affect the Republican Party politically just as the Clinton Legacy has affected the Democratic Party some six years earlier. That is to say, Clinton’s scandal with Monica Lewinsky rubbed voters the wrong way, and they took it out on Al Gore and the rest of the Democrats. Now the tide has changed. Voters will be angry over the fact that have continuously been lied to by the George W. Bush administration. Amazingly, the Democrats scandals seem to reflect problems what they have in their pants (sex issues) while the Republicans problems are their corrupt obsession to say and do anything to get their hands on our wallets. (lobbyist, blank checks to companies like Halliburton and unfounded reasons to invade countries that fail to have WMDs). For some strange reason…..these rub people the wrong way…..and they take it out on the guys who are still in office. It happened before….and it will happen again.