{"id":5230,"date":"2005-09-12T11:14:05","date_gmt":"2005-09-12T15:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5230"},"modified":"2005-09-12T11:14:05","modified_gmt":"2005-09-12T15:14:05","slug":"looking-ahead-to-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/looking-ahead-to-midterms\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking ahead to midterms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roll Call reported today that National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) is feeling some anxiety<\/a> about the 2006 election cycle. He’s confident that the Republicans will maintain their majority in the House — there just aren’t enough competitive seats to suggest otherwise — but he “conceded that he’d like to see current GOP poll numbers higher.”<\/p>\n

To help bolster his contention that things aren’t too bad for the GOP, Reynolds relied on some polling data that Republicans could find encouraging.<\/p>\n

Reynolds, however, points to generic ballot polling showing that neither party has a distinct advantage when respondents are asked whom they would prefer to control Congress. <\/p>\n

He cites a Fox News poll taken late last month where 38 percent of respondents said they’d like to see Democrats win next year’s Congressional elections, while 35 percent said they’d rather see the GOP win.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the generic ballot question is the key to the GOP’s comfort going into next year’s election cycle, then Dems have reason to be optimistic. After all, the Fox News poll Reynolds cited was taken well before Katrina struck, while a Newsweek poll was taken after — and the Newsweek poll wasn’t nearly as close<\/a> on this question.<\/p>\n

Reflecting the tarnished view of the administration, only 38 percent of registered voters say they would vote for a Republican for Congress if the Congressional elections were held today, while 50 say they would vote for a Democrat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the three-point gap was a good sign to the NRCC a few weeks ago, what do you suppose they think about a 12-point gap now?<\/p>\n

In addition, this poll seems to undercut some of the conventional wisdom about relative parity between the parties.
\n
\nFirst, the conventional wisdom tells us that voters are disappointed with everyone equally and that Dems aren’t helped by widespread disappointment with government. The Newsweek data suggests otherwise — with a 12-point lead in a generic ballot match-up, Dems are<\/i> benefiting from voters’ discontent.<\/p>\n

Second, the conventional wisdom also suggests Dems won’t excel unless the public believes they have a credible and specific policy agenda to offer voters as an alternative. I’ve never bought into this idea — when voters see one party leading the government in a direction they don’t like, they’re inclined to pick the other party.<\/p>\n

As it happens, this second point is kind of complicated. Dem leaders happen to buy into the idea, which means the party is frequently going to great lengths to prove that it has a “credible and specific policy agenda.” Indeed, just last week, Sens. Harry Reid and Max Baucus unveiled a pretty detailed outline<\/a> of proposed legislative ideas on responding to Katrina’s devastation.<\/p>\n

This does not mean, however, that Dems are up in the poll because people like the Dem relief plan. That’s impossible — no one’s heard anything about the Dem relief plan. The truth is far simpler: voters just aren’t buying what the Republicans are selling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roll Call reported today that National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) is feeling some anxiety about the 2006 election cycle. He’s confident that the Republicans will maintain their majority in the House — there just aren’t enough competitive seats to suggest otherwise — but he “conceded that he’d like to see current GOP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}