Hope springs eternal, even in politics, but the latest MSNBC/Wall Street Journal poll has some truly bad news for Democrats: it shows the Republican party is winning back and retaining parts of the coalition that helped it gain and keep power.
If it remains intact on election day — and the poll suggests the GOP is keeping the voters it is regaining — then in the short term the Dems face a big defeat in November. In the long term the Democratic party faces some major problems in both implementing agenda policies and the efficacy of its 21st century political strategy and the effectiveness of how it’s arguing its case.
Republicans have solidified support among voters who had drifted from the party in recent elections, putting the GOP in position for a strong comeback in November’s mid-term campaign, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
The findings suggest that public opinion has hardened in advance of the 2010 elections, making it tougher for Democrats to translate their legislative successes, or a tentatively improving U.S. economy, into gains among voters.
Republicans have reassembled their coalition by reconnecting with independents, seniors, blue-collar voters, suburban women and small town and rural voters—all of whom had moved away from the party in the 2006 elections, in which Republicans lost control of the House. Those voter groups now favor GOP control of Congress.
As we’ve noted here many times, independent voters — never really a monolithic group — are often a key to winning elections, particularly close ones. How a large chunk of them are reacting is often a key harbinger of what the final results will be or the closeness of a race.
“This data is what it looks like when Republicans assemble what for them is a winning coalition,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff, who conducts the survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart.
He said the Republican alliance appeared to be “firmer and more substantial” than earlier in the year.
Mr. Hart noted that, to his own party’s detriment, a series of major news events and legislative achievements—including passage of a sweeping health-care law, negotiating a nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia and making a quick arrest in the Times Square terrorism attempt—has not measurably increased support for Democrats. “A lot has happened,” he said, “but the basic dynamic of the 2010 elections seems almost set in concrete.”
A big shift is evident among independents, who at this point in the 2006 campaign favored Democratic control of Congress rather than Republican control, 40% to 24%. In this poll, independents favored the GOP, 38% to 30%.
Not good news for the Democrats, no matter how this number will be spun.
Suburban women favored Democratic control four years ago by a 24-point margin. In the latest survey, they narrowly favored Republicans winning the House. A similar turnaround was seen among voters 65 and older.
“This is the inverse of where we were four years ago, and in a way that projects to substantial Democratic losses in November,” Mr. McInturff said.
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg note that some other polling results suggest a lot has not changed:
*** The more things change…: We know the political landscape can change in the blink of an eye, as it did after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. But what’s fascinating about our new NBC/WSJ poll is how little has changed politically, despite all that has taken place since our last poll — the oil spill, the failed Times Square bombing, the Dow’s plunge (then rebound), the crisis in Greece, the 290,000 jobs in April, and the signing of health care into law. In our poll, Obama’s approval sits at 50% (where it has been, minus a point or two, since August ’09); the GOP maintains its enthusiasm edge heading into the midterms; both Dems and the GOP have net-negative fav/unfavs; and the public is still very pessimistic about the economy (76% believe we’re still in a recession).
They also note:
—The poll has good news/bad news for the GOP – including some long-term problems for that party as well:
The poll is mostly good news for the Republican Party — at least as it relates to the upcoming midterms. It shows that the GOP is now winning key demographic groups…. that it was losing in 2006. Also, the number believing that the nation is on the wrong track (56%) looks a lot more like 1994 (when the party in power lost control of Congress) than it does 1998 or 2002 (when the president’s party fared historically well in the midterms). But in the long term, there are dangerous signs for the GOP. First, the party continues to have a net-negative fav/unfav (which wasn’t the case in ’94). And second, it has a MAJOR problem with the country’s fastest growing demographic group: Latinos. In the poll, Democrats have a 37-point advantage among Latinos when it comes to which party does a better job of protecting minorities, a 42-point edge in protecting immigrants against discrimination, and a 28-point advantage on the issue of immigration.
The questions for the Dems thus become (1) Will Latinos go to the polls in big numbers this November? (2) If they do, will their votes matter enough to impact key elections? Likely answer: even if they go to the polls, it won’t be enough to counter the GOP’s resolidifying its coalition — if this holds.
–Barack Obama and the Democratic party are now perceived almost as two different brands and if Obama campaigns for Democrats he could help bring out the vote — the Republican vote.
Obama and congressional Democrats have two completely different brands right now. For instance, by a 51%-36% margin, the public thinks that Obama is more concerned about the interests of average Americans than of large corporations when it comes to dealing with financial markets. But congressional Dems’ score here is essentially reversed — 53% think they’re more concerned about protecting the interests of large corporations, while just 35% believe they’re looking out for average Americans. (Congressional Republicans’ score is even worse: 71% for corporations, 20% for average Americans.) Here’s something else: Obama is more helpful in rallying the GOP base (64% of Republican voters say they’re voting GOP to OPPOSE Obama and Dem candidates) than he is his own base (49% of Dem voters say they’re voting to SUPPORT Obama and Dem candidates). Translation: Obama’s presence on the campaign trail might solidify the GOP base without guaranteeing the same lift to Democrats.
The real bottom line is that going into the elections the Republicans have a lot of trending going towards them and the ear of some voters who had tuned them out in 2008 again.
The question is back to the old cliche: if the Republicans will grab defeat out of the jaws of victory.
And the realities for the Democrats is: their message either has not won over the country as they hoped or assumed or they have failed to get their message out in a convincing way.
The biggest reality underpinning this is the economy: where will it be on election day and will it alter some of the May 2010 dynamics?
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.