Some rather good news via RCP, in the form of the latest AP/GfK poll. Short version: polling adults*, there’s a +1 GOP advantage on who poll respondents want to run Congress (37/36); the same poll had it 39/32 the other way in January. And there’s an intensity gap, as well…
In the new poll, registered voters who are most strongly interested in politics favored the Republicans by 14 percentage points, 51 percent to 37 percent. In January, this group was about evenly split, with 42 percent preferring Democrats and 45 percent the Republicans.
That’s not the only positive sign in the poll for the Republicans.
Favorable views of the GOP have improved, with 38 percent overall now saying they hold a favorable impression of the Party. Republicans’ positive view of their own party has increased from 57 percent in January to 72 percent now.
…which might surprise some – and not just those on the Left. I think that we tend to forget sometimes that folks on the Internet are not always representative of the general population, and that includes conservative and Republican folks on the Internet. That includes our expectations of, and disappointment in, our own political party: most people (both Democratic and Republican) are simply not as critical of their respective parties as partisans can be. I know that sounds weird, given that conventional wisdom has it that partisans are the ones who are most likely to be cheerleaders; but in my experience, conventional wisdom has no idea what it’s talking about when it comes to this topic.
All in all, we still have seven months to screw things up, of course – but this is still where the GOP wants to be, the spring before a critical set of national elections. And it’s certainly not where the Democrats want to be, either.
Moe Lane
*One major caveat: “The AP-GfK Poll was conducted March 20-24, 2014 using KnowledgePanel, GfK’s probability-based online panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. It involved online interviews with 1,012 adults, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points for all respondents.” Still, the trend is encouraging.
Hopefully, all the dirty tricks, all the lies, and all their abuse of power has finally caught up to the Democrats. Let’s beat these clowns in 2014 and take the White House in 2016, let’s get this country back on the right track.
The evidence is that a majority of Republican politicians don’t actually want to shrink the size and scope of the federal government or proactively address the Social Security tsunami.
I’d venture that with respect to “the right track”, “you can’t get there from here”.
I’d agree with that. ‘Our side’, generally, seems to have a higher % of office holders who talk one way (for the home crowd) and act another.
Hence the importance of the primaries and picking off the Two-Faces.
It only takes a few successes as those on ‘our side’ also show an ability to learn, once the possibility of political extinction takes hold in their minds.
Yeah, but it’s a start!