Posts Tagged ‘national mood’

The truth about America

Hope and change.

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Video: Jimmy Carter’s NSA actually uses the word “malaise” to describe national mood under Obama

Everything old is new again.

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Weekly Tracking Poll: Republicans Take a Hit

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 5/24/2010-5/27/2010. Registered Voters. MoE 2.8% (Last week's results in parentheses):

Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.

The general grumpiness that was evident in last week's edition of the tracking poll continued on a similar trajectory. The biggest point of distinction between this week and last week is that the brunt of the voter pessimism actually falls on the shoulders of the out-party this week.

Every Republican entity slides back this week, with falls between 2-3 points for all of the above. Meanwhile, the Democratic performances are mixed, with the individuals gaining incremental ground on their net favorabilities, and the party and the party-in-Congress taking two point hits.

The slide on the right track-wrong track metric that we saw last week continued this week, pressing the RT/WT ratio back down to 40/56.

In a strange converse, however, the Democrats actually perform incrementally better on the generic Congressional ballot, leading by a single point (47-46). One would expect that increased voter pessimism would fall on the head of the party in power. But what has happened, in this case, is that voters are returning to the pool of the undecided. Both Republicans and Democrats shed support this week. It just so happens that Republicans lose more of their support than do the Dems.

The implications of the national mood for the 2010 elections are still very much subject to interpretation. Tom Jensen of PPP has opined that universal pessimism works in the GOP's favor, because even a deeply unpopular challenger holds the prospect for change from the status quo. However, it also is quite evident that the GOP cannot win this thing on demonizing Democrats alone. That was the playbook in PA-12, and it came up well short of the goal.

Democratic losses in November are, to be blunt, somewhat inevitable. Two wave elections in a row leave no shortage of low-hanging fruit.

Yet despite the week-to-week variations in our data, there has been a very stubborn consistency. Democrats are not terribly beloved, but Republicans are even less so. It seems increasingly plausible that the failure of the Republican Party to reverse its own negative perceptions (which have held steady throughout the cycle) will limit their ability to exploit the national discontent.

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Huff Radio: Left, Right & Center: Elena Kagan’s Nomination, Stocks Sliding and Mid-Term Elections

As oil pours into the gulf, Obama smacks down the responsible CEOs. And the question is asked, with nearly every borough of New York represented on the high court, what happened to diversity?

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Weekly Tracking Poll: A Rising Tide For All?

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 5/3/2010-5/6/2010. Registered Voters. MoE 2.8% (Last week's results in parentheses):

Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.

Three weeks might be too early to classify something as a "trend", but there has been a trend-line developing over the past three weeks that, if it continues, will be the best news for Democratic electoral prospects in quite some time:

This week, the right track/wrong track indicator sits at 42/55.

While that might not sound like a robust number, it is the highest number of respondents saying that the nation is on the right track since October 29th of last year. Being the majority party in Congress means that you claim the credit when voters are satisfied, and you bear the burden when they are grumpy. Ergo, a less grumpy electorate is good news for the Democrats.

The slightly improved national mood is also reflected in the favorability stats this week, which show a somewhat unique pattern in that no one saw their net favorabilities dip this week. The stats were somewhat random in nature, with Republicans and Democrats alike realizing what could only be described as incremental gains.

On the generic ballot test, the Democrats continued to hold their very narrow lead for the second consecutive week. A note of caution: if the current margin holds (48-47), it is safe to assume that the Democrats will experience a pretty sizeable loss of seats. Remember than when the Democrats forged their solid majority in the 2008 elections, their net lead in the national House vote was a shade over seven points. A one-point lead could represent a sizeable shift in seats.

If there is an item upon which polls seem to be somewhat divergent lately, it is on the issue of voter intensity. In our DK/R2K tracking poll, the past month has shown an increase in voter intensity on both sides. Unfortunately for the Democrats, in our tracking poll we see the enthusiasm gap actually widening again in the past month after a dramatic narrowing post-HCR.

This stands in contrast to new numbers out on Thursday from Gallup, which has seen a palpable narrowing of the enthusiasm gap over the last few weeks.

The bottom line is that there is ample anecdotal evidence, both in this poll and others, to suggest that the Democrats might have finally bounced off their floor a little bit. The question is whether this is a transient moment of improvement, or a lasting trend that will last into the Fall and serve to counterbalance the conventional wisdom that 2010 will be a purely triumphant cycle for the GOP.

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