Marley, I’m not sure I understand exactly what the moderator instruction is. It seems Bricker’s claim is that people are making outlandish claims, and then when faced with the ghastly threat of a wager, start moderating their claims. If his claim were true, this would seem to be totally reasonable in GD or Elections - I’d rather dispense with outlandish claims that aren’t even believed by the people making them.
However, I dispute that his claim is true: it seems to me that actually this entire thread (at least post-resurrection) has been about very moderate claims that now, based on some recent polling data, there’s some improved chance for Democrats to retake the house, and that the level of moderateness in this discussion has not changed based on Bricker’s proposed wager.
How much of this are we allowed to discuss here? And how much is taunting? And how much is hijacking?
63% are angry at the Republicans for the way they have handled the shutdown.
57% are angry at the way the Democrats are dealing with the shutdown.
53% say they are also angry at President Obama
Would you say that the difference between 63% and 57% is significant enough that Republicans should be scared enough to fold?
Washington Post shows the disapproval splits being 70% Republicans in Congress, 61% Democrats in Congress, 51% Obama. So that’s a 19% delta between Congressional Republicans and Obama, or 9% if you want to use Congressional Democrats as the baseline. Yes, I think that’s probably significant enough to worry Republicans. Plus they’re up for re-election long before we get another vote on the Presidency.
Even more concerning for GOP congresscritters is what is happening among independentsin particular: since 9/29 approval for Obama has gone up from 34 to 41% while disapproaval for GOPs in Congress has gone up from 66 to 71. Among those “somewhat conservative” disapproval for GOPs in Congress has increased from 58 to 68%. Moderates’ disapproval also increased - from 66 to 73.
These are substantial moves in the blocs that decide any potentially swing district; the Democrats have not lost any ground in these groups while the GOP has lost lots.
As the poll analysis notes no one can say how much this will impact elections many months from now. But it is significant.
Eh, it’s hard to attach any significance to numbers for “independents” in polls, because “independents” aren’t a consistent group of people. If 34% of independents thought something in an old poll, and 41% of independents think that in a new poll, it’s more likely to indicate people changing whether they call themselves “independent” than it is to indicate people changing what they think about the issues.
There’s good reason to think independents aren’t the same people they were a couple of terms ago, too. Given the relative shrinking of self-identified Republicans vs. Democrats, it may well be that many former independents have now pretty well aligned themselves with the Sane Party, while many former reliable Republicans have grown so disgusted with what they’ve become that they no longer claim to be members. But these haven’t yet made the leap across the aisle, or they remain optimistic that their former party will come back to its senses.
Why do they have to vote Dem? There’s plenty of time for Wall Street interests to gin up a bunch of center right candidates to primary the Teapublicans. Of course there is not much difference between a center right Republican and a Democrat nowadays, but we don’t need to be telling the Republicans that, do we? ;D
What I find interesting is that this indicates a split between the interests of wealthy ultra conservatives like the Koch Brothers, who pretty much set up the Tea Party, and wealthy Wall Street types who just want to keep the money flowing and see the Tea Party disinterest in raising the debt ceiling as money flowing out of their pockets. Could be interesting! I guess “getting nasty” would be too much to hope for …
What I’d really like to see in polls would be a category for “persons who have voted for at least one candidate from each of the major parties in a federal race, within the past 8 years”, or something like that. “Conservative”, “Liberal”, “Moderate”, and “Extreme” are mostly just self-identified, and so don’t mean much, and there are plenty of people who call themselves “independent” and then always vote the same straight ticket. But somebody who sometimes genuinely votes one way and sometimes the other is a real swing voter, and I’d be especially curious to know what they think.
If the election was held today, yes. See the link provided by Tabby Cat here. Sam Wang’s take. He has been as (if not more) on target as Nate Silver ever was (just a bit less able to write for us masses) and states clearly that if the election was held today a 30 seat shift would be reasonable to expect. Thing is a year is a long time.
Cute. Surprised they didn’t work in how asinine the problems for the Democrats are.
Anyway impressive figures. The GOP now scores the lowest favorability and highest unfavorability ratings ever … at least since Gallup started tracking in 1992. Democrats are traveling in the same mediocre ranges they’ve been in for several years now, which while nothing to bray about is not as horrible. GOP has a +32 unfavorable to favorable spread; Democrats a +6. Sure it would be better to be more favorable than unfavorable …
That said the last time the GOP favorability dropped nearly so low, end of '98, it came back to its more typical numbers pretty quickly. Again a year is a long time.