If this poll is true it would be particularly bad news for the GOP:
Middle-class voters who deserted the Democratic Party a dozen years ago are now giving the party its best chance to reclaim the House since the GOP swept Democrats from power in 1994.
Motivated by anger at President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, 56 percent of likely voters said they would vote on Nov. 7 to send a Democrat to the House and 37 percent said they would vote Republican. Voters in the latest Associated Press-AOL News poll rated Iraq and the economy as their top issues.
“I don’t care if I vote for Happy the Clown, just so it’s not who’s there now,” said Mary Nyilas, 51, an independent voter from Cologne, N.J., who said she would do everything she could to “vote against the powers that put us in this situation” in Iraq.
Nyilas’ description is perhaps an apt one: many independent voters remain unhappy about many members of the political class from both parties and do tend to view the state of political debate and politican campaigning as something of a circus.
It appears as if this ire is going to be directed at the Republicans in the upcoming vote due to (a)the fact the party controls all branches of the government right now so if independents want to cast a classic send-em-a-messsage protest vote the GOP is the party that will be voted against and (b)the administration and the GOP party elite appointed and largely controlled by it has made little effort to woo independent voters in terms of policies (more moderate) or style (less polarizing).
But as any mother knows who has ever booked a clown for their kid’s birthday party, there are good clowns and clowns that aren’t so good.
So perhaps a new way of looking at this election will be that it is Americans are ready to try a new clown act. Of course, the act has a chance once it performs to try and establish that it is more than a clown act. MORE:
Less than two weeks before voters elect a new Congress, the poll showed Republicans are in jeopardy of losing their grip on the House after a dozen years in power. The survey found voters leaning considerably more toward Democrats in the final weeks of the campaign.
In early October, Democrats had a 10 percentage-point advantage when voters were asked whether they would vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate in their congressional district. The Democratic edge is now 19 percentage points.
White House political Maven karl Rove has suggested that the private polls he sees coupled with the GOP’s now legendary get-out-the-vote demographic software will carry election day. Perhaps.
But if the GOP is losing the middle class AND independent voters as others suggest it’s hard to see how to see how it can do more than at keep a tenuous grip on power. Will both parties develop new, more solid coalitions? And, in the end, what are they likely to be?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.