Is it going to happen again? Will the Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Two new polls:
The contest for control of Congress has tightened in the days leading up to the Nov. 7 vote with the Democrats’ margin narrowing, two polls showed.
Democrats hold a 51 percent to 45 percent edge among likely voters, down from a 14-point margin two weeks ago, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll. A separate poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed a similar decrease in support for Democrats, who now have a 47 percent to 43 percent advantage over Republicans compared with 50 percent to 39 percent two weeks ago.
The Pew poll shows a considerable tightening. It could reflect various factors: near-buyer’s remorse before the sale on the part of many who were posed to cast votes for Democrats; the Democrats’ inability to close a sale; the GOP elite’s ability to exploit John Kerry’s “bungled joke” to arouse the party faithful; the beginning impact of the Republican apparatus’ focus to zero in on key demographic groups and start appealing to them to get out to vote; and the continued triumph of ingrained partisan thinking and loyalty.
It means (a)as these polls show all the previous conventional wisdom on which the media (and most blogs) base their assumptions will be changing going into election day and (b)unless there is some shocking re-shift towards the Democrat side in the remaining pre-election polls, some key last minute polls now indicate Big Mo has slowly begun to kicking in for the GOP.
Bottom line: these recent polls suggest a far more narrow victory for the Democrats, which means if the Democrats gain control of the House Republican officials and talk show hosts will say it’s no big deal after all since the victory was so narrow. MORE:
The ABC/Post poll found about a third of registered voters named the war in Iraq as the single biggest issue in the election. Those surveyed were equally divided on which party would do a better job handling Iraq, with 42 percent saying Democrats and 42 percent saying Republicans. A majority, 53 percent, said the war isn’t worth fighting.
President George W. Bush’s approval rating stood at 43 percent among registered voters, up from 40 percent in an ABC/Post poll taken two weeks ago. The president has been on a 10-state campaign swing to bolster Republican congressional candidates.
Of those polled, 60 percent said they disapprove of the way the Republican-led Congress is doing its job, and 59 percent said the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. While a majority disapproves of Congress overall, 56 percent of registered voters said they approve of the job done by their own representative.
A separate poll conducted for Time magazine showed that Democrats may be more motivated to vote for their candidates than Republicans. Fifty-two percent of registered Democrats said they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, compared with 39 percent of Republicans.
So it will again boil down to turnout. AND:
The poll also found a drop in support for Republicans among white evangelical Christians, one of the party’s core constituencies, according to Time. In that group, 54 percent said they favor Republican candidates. By comparison, 78 percent of the white evangelicals supported Bush in the 2004 election, the magazine said.
In a narrow vote, once again, watch the independent vote. If by election day there’s a familiar pattern with both parties’ usual supporters supporting their party after all (that would mean disgruntled Republicans who were so upset over the direction of Republicanism and the country putting bitter complaints aside to help their team win) the independent vote could turn the tide in some key races.
But the trending of these polls — if these are the accurate ones — suggests what had almost become unthinkeable over the past week on both sides:
There is a chance Democrats could wake up on Wed. Nov. 8 and find that not only didn’t they not get the Senate but they didn’t get the House after all.
NOTE: As you can see by our posts here as polls come out, polls often can show a general trend or be contradictory. The best way to follow polls is to visit HERE.
Meanwhile, Dick Polman writes that whether the Democrats do well or not will likely have little or no impact on this administration.
UPDATE: More on Pew. That poll said undecided voters could decide the election — and that John Kerry’s joke may well have turned some voters off:
The narrowing of the Democratic lead raises questions about whether the party will win a large enough share of the popular vote to recapture control of the House of Representatives. The relationship between a party’s share of the popular vote and the number of seats it wins is less certain than it once was, in large part because of the increasing prevalence of safe seat redistricting. As a result, forecasting seat gains from national surveys has become more difficult.
The survey suggests that the judgment of undecided voters will be crucial to the outcome of many congressional races this year. As many as 19% of voters now only lean to a candidate or are flatly undecided. The Democrats hold a 44% to 35% lead among committed voters. But the race is more even among voters who are less strongly committed to a candidate; those who only lean to a candidate divide almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats (5% lean Republican/4% lean Democrat).
AND:
In addition, Sen. John Kerry’s “botched joke” about the war in Iraq attracted enormous attention. Fully 84% of voters say they have heard a lot or a little about Kerry’s remarks  with 60% saying they have heard a lot. By comparison, just 26% say they have heard a lot about President Bush’s statement that he will keep Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense until he leaves office in 2009. Most voters say Kerry’s statement is not a serious consideration in their vote, but 18% of independent voters say it did raise serious doubts about voting for a Democratic candidate.
So will it boil down to 2006, in the end, being a referedum on John Kerry’s inability to stick to scripted joke?
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.