Tag: 2014

The Inevitable* “Wow, That Politico Poll Is Awful For the Left, Huh?” post.

Not good news for the Democrats, five and a half months out:

President Barack Obama’s job approval slump and voters’ entrenched wariness of his health care law are dogging Democrats ahead of the 2014 midterm elections, and Republicans have captured a lead in the areas home to the year’s most competitive races, according to a new POLITICO poll.

In the congressional districts and states where the 2014 elections will actually be decided, likely voters said they would prefer to vote for a Republican over a Democrat by 7 points, 41 percent to 34 percent. A quarter of voters said they were unsure of their preference.

39/30 for House districts; 43/36 for Senate.  But this is the fun finding: “Nearly two-thirds of voters said they prefer a government in which different parties control the White House and Congress, rather than one party controlling all the levers of power.” Translation: the public may (and does) hate both parties, but they’re quite keen on this entire ‘gridlock’ thing.  Which should surprise nobody, but will surprise a bunch of people anyway. Continue reading The Inevitable* “Wow, That Politico Poll Is Awful For the Left, Huh?” post.

Democrats’ youth vote for 2014 looks like… 2010’s.

Yes, that would make Democrats frantic.  Why do you ask?

Just the one poll, of course – and note that it was done by a Democratic pollster, so don’t assume that ‘scaring the heebie-jeebies out of the Left’ isn’t part of the business model – but it does seem to fit.  It does not really surprise me that the Democrats can only count on 37% of its 2012 youth vote in 2014; as Aaron Blake noted, the youth vote dropped precipitously in 2010, too.  Midterm elections are dominated by voting blocs that make the effort to vote; the young are typically not one of those voting blocs. Continue reading Democrats’ youth vote for 2014 looks like… 2010’s.

Nate Silver (translated): Yeah, the GOP is going to take the Senate back.

When a partisan writes something like this: “The past 14 years have featured a number of exceptionally exciting elections with control of the federal government at stake. This year, it probably isn’t” …then you know that things look grim for the party that the partisan is a partisan for.  If you can’t spin for the win, spin away the loss: it’s a trick as old as Aesop.  In this case, Nate Silver’s argument is that since the GOP already has veto power over everything (except for non-Supreme Court nominations, now that Harry Reid killed the filibuster for them*), then what difference does it make if the GOP does well this year? And sure, it makes no difference…

  • Except for judicial nominations, of course.  Which Nate Silver mentions.
  • And treaties. Silver mentions that, too.
  • Not to mention that of course the better we do this year, the more margin we have in 2016.  Silver’s aware of that, as well.
  • And then there’s the prospect of another hammer-blow to state Democrats, which will keep them in useful disarray for the rest of the decade, probably.  Still something that Silver notes; why does he think that this election isn’t a big deal, again?

Continue reading Nate Silver (translated): Yeah, the GOP is going to take the Senate back.

What if the 2014 electorate *doesn’t* reset in time for 2016?

Here’s the Democrats central problem in 2016:

Seniors, who frequently voted Democratic over pocketbook issues like Social Security and Medicare, have migrated into the Republican column. White blue-collar voters, once a staple of Democratic coalitions past, have become estranged from their old political home over cultural issues. In their place are what my colleague Ron Brownstein labels “the coalition of the ascendant”—single women, minorities, and millennial voters. Voters within these groups turned out at high levels in the last two presidential elections to offset Democratic losses elsewhere.

The challenge for Democrats in this year’s midterms is getting these “ascendant” voters enthusiastic about showing up to the polls when Obama isn’t on the ballot—something that Democratic turnout specialists are working overtime to achieve. Even if they don’t show up and Republicans retake the Senate in 2014, the assumption is they’re bound to return at similar levels for the next presidential election. That’s not necessarily the case.

Continue reading What if the 2014 electorate *doesn’t* reset in time for 2016?

WaPo uses the dread number ‘2006’ when discussing Barack Obama.

Everyone in the world – well, maybe not quite that many people – is talking about this Washington Post-ABC poll/article that suggests that Barack Obama has been merely spitting in the wind for the last month.  There’s a lot to mine in there, and not just for our side*, but this passage jumped out at me:

Although Obama’s overall approval rating is at its lowest point ever in Post-ABC polls, his disapproval is still a few points better than at its worst. That’s because more people than usual say they had no opinion. At this point, Obama’s approval rating looks only slightly better than that of President George W. Bush in the spring of 2006.

Continue reading WaPo uses the dread number ‘2006’ when discussing Barack Obama.

This is defeat, Democrats: you probably should have avoided it.

This fascinates me: “For the third election cycle, Democrats are still debating their options for handling the political fall-out from passage of the Affordable Care Act: fight, flight or finesse.” And it fascinates me because there are no options. The Democrats made a big bet in 2009 that they could ram the law through first, then justify it later. They lost that bet; and now come the consequences.

Can individual Democrats survive? Sure… in the House, and in the safer parts of the Senate.  But the most viable position – I screwed up, and if you re-elect me, I will vote with the Republicans to repeal Obamacare – is also absolutely anathema to the Democratic establishment.  To be fair, there’s a reason for that.  The Democratic party has gone all-in on this issue; and if the national cadre can just hold on then eventually the Democratic party will recover, once all the old bodies are removed and a new crop of politicians from the state party apparatuses are brought in. As institutions, both the Democrats and the Republicans profit mightily from inertia*; the Democratic establishment is kind of counting on that right now. Continue reading This is defeat, Democrats: you probably should have avoided it.

Quote of the Day, Good Sign / Don’t Get Cocky edition.

This is from, of all places, NPR:

“We always look at the question: how interested are you in the upcoming elections on a 1-to-10 scale, with a 9-to-10 being the most interested.” said Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican research firm, who pointed to a recent Wall St Journal/NBC News poll his firm did with Hart Research Associates.

“In a presidential election, it doesn’t mean as much because everybody votes. In a mid-term election, where you’re looking at 40 percent turnout, it does make a difference… Among voters who rate their interest a 9 or 10, Republicans have a 15-point advantage, 53 [percent] to 38 [percent]. So you have Republicans now gaining the same kind of intensity they had in 2010. It’s like our guys are campaigning downhill as opposed to the Democrats.”

But, as the title says, don’t get cocky. “Confident” is fine, though. People react well to that and it’s good for morale.

Moe Lane

Rumblings of worry among the Left over 2014.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) The entertaining bit about this Bill Press piece is not that he’s hilariously wrong about where the evvvvvvillllll Koch Brothers fall on the donor scale, or perhaps scale of donors; nor is it that he seems to think that there’s more than a physics’s chance* of the Democrats retaking the House.  It’s that his basic point is, in fact, sound: by all means, the Democratic party should concentrate on the 2014 elections first**.  But the likelihood that the institution in question will think clearly on that subject? …Well, that’s another physics’ chance.

Moe Lane Continue reading Rumblings of worry among the Left over 2014.