Today brings a new poll from Democracy Corps titled “Revolt against DC and the Republican Congress.” And it’s true: their polling shows that even in Republican districts, the GOP’s brand has taken a beating.
But once you get past the generic questions and ask about approval/disapproval of actual members of Congress, the picture turns sharply.
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In Democratic districts, net incumbent approval has plummeted by 11 points, from +8 approval to +3 disapproval. In Republican districts, incumbent approval has gone down only 4 points. You see the same results when they ask a question about warmth of feeling toward incumbents: It’s down 7 points in Republican districts and 9 points in Democratic districts.
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Interesting, isn’t it. People seem to hate generic Republicans and actual Democrats.
Huh, that is odd, the actual survey sounds more like a mixed bag. True, the incumbents are in trouble, but the biggest hit that the Republicans got can not be ignored.
You’re just repeating what I said. You’re pointing out damage to “Republican brand”. Yet that is much greater than the damage to the actual Republican incumbents. And the damage to the Democrat “brand” is less - but the damage to the actual Democrat incumbents is greater.
People seem to hate generic Republicans and actual Democrats.
Republican “party brand” sucks. But what’s important is not whether people hate Republicans in abstract. What’s important is whether people vote for their actual Republican politician. Same with Democrat “brand” vs. voting for actual Democrat politicians.
What do you think is more important? I would say the “brand” thing is minor and troublesome. Voting for actual politicians is the “major thing”.
The flaw on that idea is that then most incumbents will be taken down by others of the same party in the primaries, what is expected on the Republican side though is that it is likely that the incumbents will be trounced by people so extreme that it will not bode well for the Republicans on the 2014 November election.
What’s the mystery? Voters in Dem districts are not so eager for their rep to work with Obama because they know their rep will work with Obama in any case. Voters in Pub districts are more concerned on this point because they fear – with good reason based on experience – that their rep will obstruct.
I think the mystery is about why the pollster got the results that the OP just concentrated with, the mystery is not the dislike of obstructionism, but how that does not lead to more dislike of the Republican congress critter.
IMHO there is one possibility that they are not taking into account, this would suggest that Republicans would be more prepared to vote for the incumbent, but a good number of the candidates would be in trouble once the main election takes place because the people would then notice that their representative is still in wacky obsessive obstructionist mode.
Generally, opponents will try to make elections a referendum on the incumbent. The incumbent will generally appeal to the voter making a choice between two individuals (eg, Obama vs Romney).
As seen by the very high re-election rates of incumbents, the “choice of two candidates” practice is very successful for incumbency.
Interesting to actually look at the data itselfrather than a few selected items out of it.
The study consists of 1250 interviews spread out among 80 districts, 49 GOP held, 31 Democratic held.
In the 24 districts that are currently GOP but are considered most competitive 51% of voters say that they cannot vote for the incumbent again (up 3 since June) and 36% (down 1) say they will vote to re-elect.
Looking at all the districts they considered competitive the change in “can’t vote to re-elect” has gone from 46 to 50% in the GOP held districts and held at 47% in the Democratic held ones. The positive statement of “will vote to re-elect” has gone up for both groups, for the GOPs from 38 to 39 and for the Democrats from 37 to 39.
Voters seem to want to vote against actual vulnerable Republicans more than they want to vote against actual vulnerable Democrats. And in elections that is what matters.
Now that said I am unimpressed by this poll. To say anything at individual district levels with a total of less than 16 people polled on average in each district seems absurd. If equally distributed even pooling all the 24 highest at risk GOP districts together gives a total sample of 375 people. What do the unreported error bars for just those 24 districts look like?!? For all GOP (49 districts) they claim a margin of error for 95% confidence 3.58% and for all Democratic districts (31 districts) of 4.38%. Other issues too.
But if we believe this informs at all the bit to focus on is how people plan to vote. And that has moved up to over half of all voters now plan on voting against their at-risk GOP incumbent, a sizable increase, compared to stable less than half numbers for at-risk Democratic incumbents. I just don’t believe it at all.
Also curious about the whole “at risk” thingy. Would have thought fewer Republicans would be considered “at risk” due to the creative re-districting of recent months.
And maybe the Republican opinion on Republican incumbents might be hard to figure because of so many Insane Clown Posse adherents who think totally crazy isn’t crazy enough. Can’t see how that can be a good thing for Republicans any way you slice it. A “moderate” Republican might not provoke fierce resistance from Democrats. Not the same for a candidate under Cruz control.
Plus, to secure the base, the Republican nominee is going to have say some batshit stuff. That attack ads will write themselves.
The takeaway from that would seem to be that if the Democrats primary their incumbents, they can retain the seats, whereas the Republicans should lose seats regardless who they run…
The 24 are ones that are actually within reach. As Wang cogently argues his current best prediction is 50/50 that the House will flip mainly because the gerrymandered districts (which include quite a few of those 24) seem to swing harder - creating more GOP districts means relying on independents more, and they apparently turn on you and want a new change if they are not pleased.
Nah. To the degree the data demonstrates anything it shows that the Democratic seats are pretty safe and that those 24 at-risk GOP seats are really at-risk.
Again a majority of all voters in those districts say that they can’t vote to re-elect their GOP incumbant; there is no such majority opting to not re-elect in the Democratically held ones. Maybe they don’t approve as much as they did but they would still feel okay voting for him/her.
It also demonstrates that the overwhelming support that the GOP has had among seniors in those districts has gone down to even (while it has increased dramatically in Democratic “battlegounds.”) And that the voters in those GOP at-risk districts want obstructionism to stop.
It’s hard to read this poll as meaning anything (they don’t even give us access to the full crosstabs) but to read it as saying the Democratic incumbents are in big trouble is most creative. Kevin Drum must have been in a bit of a tight spot for an angle to try to spin it like that.
The election is a year away. I doubt it will hinge on anything happening now, so I’m thinking this poll is an interesting intellectual exercise, but not indicative of anything that will actually happen in Nov 2014.
My advice to the Republicans: Don’t shut down the government in the fall of '14.
Hell, don’t even do it in Q1 2014. Each time something like that happens it’s going to torch the brand even further.
It already appears that Cuccinnelli is going down tomorrow…in large part due to his extremism and his close ties with that part of congress associated with the shutdown. Another one - at any time prior to E-Day 2014 - will push another part of the electorate towards ‘not voting for incumbent GOP’. Do that enough - and allow your extremists to define the public perception of your party - and you’ll lose.
Remember, in the Wang link upthread, he shows a 50/50 takeover of the House by Democrats. However, think about that. This is the off year election of a President in his second term. It should nearly be a LOCK that the republican party gains seats. Instead the narrative is how many they’ll lose.
It feels like 1998 all over again. A temporary set of gains makes the republican party overcommit and get their heads handed to them by a democratic president and his congressional allies.
Or, to sum up: no one ever learns except by direct experience.
As Drum pointed out, there’s some things about this poll that don’t make sense. I’ll believe the cited result once another poll comes to the same conclusion.