Tag: enthusiasm gap

#rsrh River in Egypt Watch, 10/06/2010.

This one is particularly good:

Don’t Blame Obama for the Enthusiasm Gap

Democratic voters have never been that thrilled about voting in midterm elections, and there isn’t much the president can do to change that.

They were kind of thrilled to do so in 2006, Sparky.  Ignore the raw percentage and note the fact that Democratic turnout exceeded Republican turnout that year; that translates to “Democrats got their voters thrilled about voting, and Republicans didn’t.”  So it can happen; all you need are competent tacticians and strategists running things.

Ah.  That’s the problem, right there*…

Moe Lane

*It takes time to take control of groups like the DNC; but the administration did so by… about this time last year.  Enjoying the results, Democrats?  – Because I am.

PPP’s Tom Jensen has a problem.

As in, how to shout out a warning without… actually shouting out a warning.  In this case, he’s getting just a little worried about his fellow Democrats turning out.  To put his findings in handy table form:

Voters Percent
Estimated % R % D R 2009 R 2008 D 2009 D 2008 R D
VA 2.000 48% 44% 0.960 1.725 0.880 1.960 56% 45%
NJ 2.200 44% 51% 0.970 1.610 1.120 2.220 60% 50%

The voter numbers are in millions, and the percentage at the end represents the percentage of McCain/Obama voters of 2008 that PPP expects to vote in the 2009 elections. While this is not-precisely-horrible news for Corzine*, it’s not good news at all for the Democrats next year:

Maybe those numbers will improve some over the weekend- and Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine certainly aren’t the best candidates- but if that pattern continues on into next year Republicans will win back the House.

The reason why is because there are a lot more Democrats in Congressional Districts that McCain won than vice versa: and there quite a few Democrats in districts that Obama didn’t actually win by all that much.  It’s going to be interesting to see how the state legislature races in NJ and VA play out this year; the results might possibly be even more of a harbinger than those of the governors races…

Moe Lane

*It would be good news, if more people actually liked Jon Corzine.  Or at least didn’t despise him.

Crossposted to RedState.