A party’s get-out-the-vote efforts are always easier when their supporters are actually anxious to get to the polls. And as National Journal’s Charlie Cook noted in his column this week, right now, Dems are motivated and ready to vote — and Republicans are less so.
When Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff interviewed 893 registered voters in their March 10-13 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, they asked voters how interested they were in this November’s midterm election on a scale of one to 10, with one representing not at all interested and 10 being very interested.
The result: 53 percent of Democrats chose 10, compared to only 43 percent of Republicans. And only 34 percent of independents were 10s. Only 7 percent of Democrats, and the same percentage of Republicans, chose 9, so that doesn’t close the gap much.
To look at the same situation from a slightly different angle, of those who said they preferred to see Democrats in control of Congress after the November elections, 53 percent chose 10, but of those that wanted to see Republicans in control, only 38 percent chose 10.
Yes, it’s early. No, we don’t know what’s going to happen between now and November. Yes, I too shudder to think what Republicans might do to help motivate their base over the next six months.
But as Cook explained, electoral changes are typically more likely to happen when one party’s voters are “complacent or disillusioned,” while the other side is “hungry or angry.” At this point, Dems are the latter and Republicans are the prior.
Consider this your morale booster for the day.