Via Stephen Green: oh, how I love this RCP Senate average map.
I might not love it so much if it hasn’t changed by October 21st, but for right now that’s a great map. Seven GOP pickups that don’t have Alaska, Colorado, and even maybe Michigan? And no Democratic pickups? Yeah, I’ll take that at this stage of the election cycle. After all, it’s not even Labor Day. Continue reading So, it’s August, and it’s GOP +7 in the Senate.
Not much to say about, except that Thomas Frank apparently wonders now why the hell he bothered to write What’s The Matter With Kansas?* – and my but he is bitter about it. What makes it kind of entertaining, in an admittedly not-nice way, is that he almost gets the real problem:
For the ruling faction of the Democratic party, meanwhile, I felt like the Kansas story triggered a bout of guilty conscience. To begin with, there was something true at the core of all the conservative bullshit: we really are ruled by a meritocratic, professional elite — just look at the members of the president’s cabinet, or who gets interviewed on NPR — and a great number of meritocratic believers really are found in the ranks of the Democrats. As a party, they are openly in love with expertise; it is who they are; it means more to them than any ideology. It’s the awful story of “The Best and the Brightest” repeating itself over and over and over again.
Continue reading Thomas Frank still can’t quit Kansas (the reverse is apparently not true).
Feast your eyes on this one, folks:
Mark this day: Obama’s approval hits the 30s in RCP for the 1st time. http://t.co/GJLlsJDYKI pic.twitter.com/ZbfCHS6pi6
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) December 3, 2013
For those without picture access, it shows that Barack Obama has dipped below an average 40% job approval rating on RCP. That more or less means that any policy-making that the Democrats want to do next year will likely not feature the President’s ‘help;’ and, of course, that Barack Obama will have plenty of time to practice his golf swing during the summer and fall of 2014. Only… the Democrats would prefer that he do that in states that do not have a Democratic Senator up for re-election, OK? Continue reading @BarackObama breaks through the 40% floor. …Downwards.
I spent perhaps a bit too much time this morning trying to put the spreadsheet below into graphical form:
| Pollster | Time | R | D | R +/- |
| NPR | Oct 3/4 | 43 | 43 | 0 |
| NPR | Sept 4/4 | 45 | 48 | -3 |
| Politico | Oct 4/4 | 46 | 45 | 1 |
| Politico | Oct 3/4 | 46 | 46 | 0 |
| Politico | Oct 2/4 | 44 | 46 | -2 |
| Politico | Oct 1/4 | 45 | 46 | -1 |
| Politico | Sept 4/4 | 44 | 46 | -2 |
| Politico | Sept 3/4 | 45 | 47 | -2 |
| Rasmussen | Oct 4/4 | 46 | 43 | 3 |
| Rasmussen | Oct 3/4 | 44 | 43 | 1 |
| Rasmussen | Oct 2/4 | 42 | 43 | -1 |
| Rasmussen | Oct 1/4 | 43 | 44 | -1 |
| Rasmussen | Sept 4/4 | 45 | 41 | 4 |
| Rasmussen | Sept 3/4 | 44 | 43 | 1 |
| Rasmussen | Sept 2/4 | 44 | 43 | 1 |
| Rasmussen | Sept 1/4 | 42 | 44 | -2 |
It shows the current pollsters checking the Generic Congressional Ballot, as per RCP. Most of the labels are self-explanatory: “R +/-” represents the amount by which Republicans are ahead/behind on any given poll. RCP’s current average is R+1.3, which represents a strong shift towards the Republicans in the last month among all three pollsters: 5 points for Rasmussen, 4 points for Politico, and 3 for NPR (although ‘shift’ is possibly the wrong word for the last one, given that there’s only been two polls).
Continue reading 2012 shaping up like 2004, on the Generic Congressional Ballot level.
Specifically, the snapshots of the race when compared to four and eight years ago. Compared to 2008, Romney’s currently running about five points ahead of McCain and Obama’s running three points behind… Obama; compared to 2004, Romney is about a point below Bush and Obama is about a point above Kerry.
Normally this would be the time where I would have the statisticians show up to tell me the horrors of trying to tease useful data out of this Frankenstein’s monster; only, the ones on the Left are all out there trying to explain how double-digit Democratic-leaning polls should be taken seriously in this largely even-steven political atmosphere and the ones on the Right are trying to figure out why people are consistently reporting having early voted at higher percentages than have actually early voted. So we’ll ket them catch up with us. Still: Obama 2012. From Obama 2008 to Kerry 2004 in one fell swoop. Hope he didn’t get a nosebleed from the sudden pressure change…
“It seems to me that Obama is intent on punishing anyone who is employed with a job over minimum wage,” [multi-generation white Ohioan Democrat Rudy] Guy said. “In the last three years, I’ve seen my spendable income drop, my cost for health-care insurance go up, and my benefits go down.
“Three years ago the question was, ‘Are you better off now than when Bush took office?’ Most of us weren’t. But am I better off today than when Obama took office?”
His answer is simple: “No.”
Continue reading #rsrh QotD, DOOM DOOM DOOMITY DOOM Edition.
Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics – an underrated blogger, possibly because RCP is such a good site generally that its bloggers get overshadowed – still holds his opinion from April that the House is going to flip big in November:
The bottom line is that Democrats are on pace for an ugly November. They’re increasingly running out of time to change the dynamic, and it looks about as likely that things will get worse as that they will get better. If the elections were held today, the balance of the evidence suggests they would lose 50-60 seats. If you think the political environment will improve for Democrats, you can adjust your expectations accordingly, but if you think they will get worse, you can do the same.
He’s basing that on a few things: the Gallup and Rasmussen generic ballot polls, and the NPR analysis. Continue reading RCP: November continues to loom for Democrats.