Polls Suggest Election Day Debacle Looming for Democrats

Wednesday, October 6, 2010 01:37 PM

By: David A. Patten

With less than a month to go before the midterm elections, Democrats could face an Election Day debacle based on a flurry of new polls that suggest independent voters will break strongly for Republicans.

Poll results from a variety of sources indicate Democrats may be unable to mitigate the political wave most pundits foresee heading their way.

Increasingly, analysts say, the question is not whether Democrats will get whacked by a frustrated electorate on Nov. 2 -- but only how badly.


A deer in headlights? A series of polls released Wednesday indicate Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi soon will be leading a minority party in Congress. (AP Photo)

Right now the GOP has message, money, and momentum," remarks former Bush media adviser Mark McKinnon, writing in The Daily Beast. "It's going to be pretty hard to screw it up."

Among the reasons McKinnon and other Republican insiders are increasingly bullish on their prospects:

* While the latest Gallup poll shows Republicans only 3 points ahead in the generic-party balloting, when the results are filtered to only include likely voters Republicans enjoy a whopping 18-point advantage, 56 percent to 38 percent.

* A Zogby International Poll conducted for The O'Leary Report that was released at noon on Wednesday shows that 68 percent of independent voters nationwide favor a federal hiring freeze. Among all likely voters, 71 percent want to freeze payroll increases. Such results appear to play strongly into the tea party narrative that has already had a major impact on primary elections this cycle.

* Sixty-nine percent of voters say their feelings about President Obama will be an important factor when they cast their ballots, according to a new poll by The Hill. That's a bad indicator for Democrats given the president's low job approval numbers. Another ominous finding for Democrats: Independents favor a divided government — meaning different parties controlling the White House and Congress — by a 53 to 30 percent margin.

* Increasingly, the disdain for healthcare reform is bipartisan, The Hill poll shows. In 12 key battleground districts, 56 percent of voters said they want a flat-out repeal of ObamaCare. The key undecided demographic favored repeal by a 49 percent to 27 percent margin. Even among Democrats, nearly 25 percent favored repeal. Pollster Mark Penn tells The Hill "there's no question that the independents are largely coming to the side of the Republican Party and are extremely dissatisfied with Congress."

* The turnout among Latino voters, who disproportionately cast ballots for Democrats, is depressed. The Pew Hispanic Center released a poll Tuesday indicating only 51 percent of registered Latino voters say they will vote, compared to 70 percent of registered voters generally. This would suggest President Obama's attempt to rouse his base by castigating the Arizona immigration law has failed. Pew found that only 32 percent of registered Latino voters say they have given the upcoming election "quite a lot" of thought, compared to 50 percent of registered voters nationwide.

* An analysis by the Weekly Standard's Jay Cost averaged five major polls to show Republicans with a whopping 42 percent to 30 percent edge over Democrats among independent voters. Other polls show that the president's job approval among independents at only about 40 percent. Cost sees a "distinct possibility" that Republican gains in the House will exceed 52 seats -- far more than the 39 needed to regain control.

One reason Democrats are facing stiff political headwinds: Voters in some districts are angry over their decision to skip out of Washington without extending the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire in January. Republican challengers are hitting incumbent Democrats for voting against amendments that would have extended the lower tax rates.

One example of how difficult the going is for Democrats in this cycle: The Hill/ANGA poll examined 12 hotly contested House races that may determine which party runs the 112th Congress, in districts ranging from Michigan, Arizona, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Of those 12 districts, 11 Republican candidates are ahead in their races. The 12th race was a tie.

"In our system, you don't just have to win over the populace, but you have to get them to the polls," left-leaning Ezra Klein of wrote Tuesday in his Washington Post blog.

The title of his piece suggested Democrats could lose as many as 86 seats if turnout is low.

GOP strategist and marketing guru McKinnon, the president of Austin, Texas-based Maverick Media, writes that his only concern is overconfidence.

"There are only two ways to run a political race: scared or unopposed," McKinnon writes. "You have to run like you’re losing."

Don't get cocky!

BTW rumor is that 3M will cut retiree health benefits if they have to abide by Obamacare. There are 23,000 3M retirees suddenly voting Tea Party / Republican in blue Minnesota....

(10-06-2010 02:55 PM)SumOfAllFears Wrote:  
A deer in headlights?

No, Botox has just permanently frozen her face that way.

I just hope the GOP doesn't think that because a black man isn't running for president that the Dems won't come out and vote thus lowering the urgency level for the Repubs to get out and vote.

Should make 94 seem good for the Democrats. Not only have they pissed off nearly every moderate and conservative in the country, but they've pissed off a lot of the liberals too by focusing too much on "compromise" to get 1 Republican vote on bills instead of actually passing the liberal agenda they promised.

(10-06-2010 03:49 PM)CitrusUCF Wrote:  Should make 94 seem good for the Democrats. Not only have they pissed off nearly every moderate and conservative in the country, but they've pissed off a lot of the liberals too by focusing too much on "compromise" to get 1 Republican vote on bills instead of actually passing the liberal agenda they promised.

What have they compromised on and why would they have needed to?

(10-06-2010 03:51 PM)Rebel Wrote:  

(10-06-2010 03:49 PM)CitrusUCF Wrote:  Should make 94 seem good for the Democrats. Not only have they pissed off nearly every moderate and conservative in the country, but they've pissed off a lot of the liberals too by focusing too much on "compromise" to get 1 Republican vote on bills instead of actually passing the liberal agenda they promised.

What have they compromised on and why would they have needed to?

Single-payer system. That way they could at least say "Hey, we did SOMETHING. We don't exactly know what yet, but it's something."

The health care bill was a big jumble of liberal universal healthcare with a whole bunch of compromise with the insurance industry and the GOP. While it does fix some problem areas like rescission (insurance companies finding any reason to drop you when you get sick) and definitely expands coverage to more people, it's a cluster**** when it comes to actually controlling costs and actually getting people healthier. To that end, it's mostly just a hand out to the insurance industry.

The insurance industry got exactly what they wanted. 40 million more insured. And a bonus 330 million forced captive audience, to charge whatever they feel is right, raise rates without over-site. The lawyers got exactly what they wanted as well, no tort reform. Gov't got an income tax on health care dollars. This comes to you courtesy of no one but the dems.

And yet premiums have gone up 40%, this year. Go figure? So much for competition and a larger insurance pool.

(10-07-2010 10:36 AM)EastStang Wrote:  And yet premiums have gone up 40%, this year. Go figure? So much for competition and a larger insurance pool.

And how was ObamaCare supposed to increase competition? (i know what u said was rhetorical) But the messiah told us......