In national polls, Dems excel, Republicans flounder

November 17, 2007

Every couple of weeks, a new poll will come out showing Congress’ approval rating reaching record lows. And every time the results are released, conservative Republicans crow about the Democratic majority being even less popular than the congressional GOP majority that was stripped of its power a year ago. It’s routine to see far-right pundits argue that it took years for Republican lawmakers to lose the public; it’s taken Dems just 11 months.

This might sound vaguely persuasive, if it weren’t completely wrong.

According to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, Americans are much more positive in their assessments of the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party — consistent with a trend Gallup has measured since April 2006. […]

The Nov. 2-4, 2007, poll finds 54% of Americans saying they have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, while 37% have an unfavorable opinion. Ratings of the Republican Party are much more negative, with 40% favorable and 50% unfavorable.

The results are very much in line with the most recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, which showed that a majority of Americans (51%) have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party. For Republicans, that number is 39%.

What’s more, in the Gallup data, Dems’ favorable ratings have been inching up steadily since the summer.

Among self-identified independents, the results are also one-sided.

Independents are more positive than negative in their views of the Democratic Party, and much more negative than positive in their ratings of the Republican Party — accounting in large part for the Democrats’ superior favorable image with the public.

A plurality of 47% of independents have a favorable opinion of Democrats, while 55% of independents have an unfavorable opinion of Republicans.

And yet, the congressional GOP still thinks the way to rebuild its majority is to move to the right and rally the conservative base. It’ll probably take a few failed election cycles for reality to set it.

Of course, the obvious question is why Congress’ approval ratings are so low if the public has a favorable opinion of the majority party. Gleaning lessons from national polls is notoriously difficult, but I suspect there’s a real difference between people’s perceptions about the parties and their satisfaction with the results.

In other words, Americans may like Dems and they’re glad Dems are in the majority, but that doesn’t mean they’re pleased that Dems have been unable to change Bush’s war policy. Indeed, much of the drag on Congress’ public standing is the result of liberals — who won’t be voting Republican anytime soon — who are frustrated that Dems haven’t fought the White House harder.

Something to keep in mind the next time you hear a conservative boasting about the latest polls. The political landscape is getting worse for them — they just don’t seem to realize it.

Why are Congress’ approval ratings so low? No mystery there. Republicans disapprove of Congress because the Democrats are running it in a way not to their liking. Democrats disapprove of Congress because they (we) don’t think they are doing enough to move their own agenda forward and are being too cooperative in implementing the Bush agenda.

After almost a year, why has Congress done nothing (Nothing!) to change the direction of the war in Iraq? Why the fawning over Gen. Petraeus and his self-serving testimony? Why did they pass the misnamed “Protect America Act” in July? Why haven’t they done something to prevent America’s agents from torturing prisoners? Why confirm an Attorney General who can’t make up his mind whether waterboarding is torture? Why is Guantanamo still open?

Why is impeachment “off the table?”

I’m sure that other commenters could add to my list. So could I. Do I approve of this Democratic-controlled Congress? HELL NO!

  • That 39 or 40% of the public favors the Republican party is extremely depressing. How could any rational person have a favorable opinion of the Republican party?

    (Yes, I know, they aren’t rational. It’s the quantity of irrational people that is so depressing.)

  • And after this week, people may be having an even better opinion of Dems for shutting the recess appointment loophole, saying no (so far) to telecom immunity and hinging war funding to redeployment plans. Go Dems!

  • There are actually four pretty strong indicators that people are generally positive about Democrats (or at least significantly more positive than they are about Republicans) that seem to be hidden in plain sight. I’m concluding that these must be hidden, even though they seem perfectly visible to me, based on the apparent inability of virtually our entire political punditry and most political bloggers to log on to the internets and click on over to PollingReport.com to see them.

    – One of course is the aforementioned generic favorability question for the Democratic versus Republic parties (extra credit to CB for picking up that one).

    – Another is the generic congressional ballot poll.

    – Yet another would be the generic (Dem v. Rep) presidential ballot preference question asked in addition to (or sometimes in lieu of) named candidate match-ups in many general election trial heat polls.

    – And finally, many polls of congressional job approval also ask respondents to rate the Democrats and Republicans in congress separately.

    In all of the above, Democrats have been averaging around 10 points or more higher than Republicans for the past year. That margin has really never budged. Even in congressional job approval polls where the approval ratings for both parties are dismal, approval ratings Republicans still average about 10 points more dismal than for Democrats.

    If you think about that it’s really no surprise. For example, I seem to be generally more inclined that most folks around here to give Democrats in congress the benefit of the doubt and try to fit everything they do into a larger picture, rather than immediately leaping to the worst possible conclusions about them. But much as I may understand that in many if not most cases they are doing the best they can under the circumstances, or that there may even be method to their madness sometimes, I would still have to rate their performance in general as fair at best to pretty poor at times.

    Most people who hang out on liberal blogs are less charitable than I am in that respect as I said, but for how many of us does that translate into a desire to see more Republicans back in congress or another Republican in the White House? I’m guessing we’d be talking fairly small numbers there.

  • Imagine how impressed people would be with the Democratic Party if it stood firmly behind its beliefs on a consistent basis.

  • The polls merely reflect how compliant, obedient, and oblivious the American population is. How can anyone be satisfied with either party when their differences are so small? How can it be that so few people are outraged at the trashing of our Constitution and the conversion of the presidency into a dictatorship? How can a president with approval ratings below 30% continue to rule as if he were a hereditary monarch? Where is the meaningful opposition? Oh, I forgot. They must be at the mall too. It’s holiday time.

  • This might be considered encouraging, until you realize that the 40% who think favorably of Republicans are right wing extremists whose objectives and worldviews are so much different from ours. It’s not a preference for Republicans to do the job over Democrats, it’s the “job” itself that we differ so markedly on. We want completely different countries, different worlds.

    The last decade has been a shock to me. I used to think we all wanted the same things, and differed only on how best to get there. But that’s just not true. The world these right wing extremists want to live in is totally incompatible with the one we’d like to see.

    It’s like a civil war. I’ve begun to think we’d be better off as two separate nations.

  • That’s the main point here. We approve of democrats over what the republicans have done and are doing. But there is not a poll asking about what could be. Would you approve more of Democrats (or repubs for that matter) if the did away with the patriot Act, the MCA, the protect America FISA laws, the war funding, torture, and put impeachment back of the table? Would you support an Independent party over the republicans and democrats if they would do these things?

    I would like to see these poll numbers because they would soar for those things to get accomplished.

    Right now the polls are just discerning between thiefs and murderers for approval ratings.

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