The GOP Hill Gets Steeper(HT to a friend with a paid link to NJ.)
With fewer than 100 days left before the Nov. 7 election, certain assumptions can now be made, contingent upon the absence of a cataclysmic event.
First, the political climate will be extremely hostile to Republican candidates. Second, while Republicans benefited from turnout in 2002 and 2004, this time voter turnout will benefit Democratic candidates. And third, the advantages that the GOP usually has in national party spending will be significantly less than normal.
In terms of the political climate, the facts are clear. All of the traditional diagnostic indicators in major national polls taken in the past 10 days show numbers consistent with an electoral rout.
In the latest Cook Political Report/RT Strategies poll, conducted last Friday through Sunday among 809 registered voters, only 27 percent said the country was headed in the right direction and 63 percent said it was off on the wrong track. In polling for NBC and the Wall Street Journal, conducted July 21-24 and for CBS and the New York Times, taken July 21-25, the right direction numbers were 27 and 28 percent, respectively, while wrong track results were 60 and 66 percent respectively. These numbers are about the same as they were at this point in 1994 and going into Election Day that year.
(The error margin was 3.2 points for Cook/RT, and 3.1 points for the other two.)
On Congress' approval rating, the Cook/RT and CBS/Times polls found just 28 percent approved of the job Congress was doing. It was 25 percent in the NBC/Journal survey. Those numbers are a shade better than at this point in 1994, but still in the same horrific category.
On the generic congressional ballot, Democrats were ahead by 13 points among registered voters, 49 to 36 percent in the Cook RT poll, and by 10 points in the other two. In 1994 NBC/Journal polling, Republicans were still 5-6 points behind in both second- and early third-quarter polling, but surged to a 5-point lead in the final pre-election poll.
Finally, measuring President Bush's job ratings, the CBS/Times poll showed a 36 percent approval rating, while the NBC/Journal and Cook/RT polls both showed 39 percent approvals. Early in the third quarter of 1994, President Clinton had a 44 percent approval; it moved up to 48 percent in the final pre-election poll.
On the second assumption, that Democrats will have a strong turnout advantage, it is very clear that they are more motivated than Republicans. When asked, on a scale of one to 10, how interested they are in the upcoming election, with 10 representing extremely interested, 44 percent of registered voters chose the top number in the Cook/RT poll. Turnout will probably be a little more than one-third, but less than this 44 percent.
Among those with the highest level of interest, Democrats had a 19-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, 52 percent to 33 percent. In the NBC/Journal poll, among those who chose 10 on the scale of interest, Democrats led by 14 points. These are very strong showings.
For the third assumption, a diminished GOP financial advantage, the June 30 cash-on-hand figures tell the whole story. For the GOP, the Republican National Committee had $44.68 million, the National Republican Senatorial Committee showed $19.9 million and the National Republican Congressional Committee reported $26.42 million, for a total of $91 million.
On the Democratic side, the Democratic National Committee had $10.84 million, the Democratic Senatorial Committee reported $37.7 million and the Democratic Congressional Committee showed $32 million, for a total of $80 million. When was the last time Democrats were within $11 million of Republicans in hard dollars? I don't know, but it's been a while.
In the House, where Democrats need a 15-seat gain to win a majority, Republicans have 15 seats that the Cook Political Report currently rates as tossups. No Democratic seats remain in that column. Another 21 GOP seats are rated as leaning Republican.
In a very large tidal wave election, as this one appears to be, it would not be unusual to see all tossups go to one party, along with a few out of the leaning column as well. Republicans might lose their House majority just in the seats in which they are behind or in which their edge is within a poll's margin of error.
In the Senate, while it is easy to get Democrats to a four- or five-seat net gain, six is tougher. But keep in mind that in the last four non-"wave" elections, between 67 and 89 percent of the races rated as "tossups" in the final Cook Political Report pre-election ratings broke toward one party each time, a domino effect, with the close races breaking toward the party with momentum.
This does not mean that Republicans no longer have any chance of holding onto their House or even Senate majorities. But as every day goes by between now and Nov. 7 that their poll numbers, nationally and locally, look this bad, the climb back gets incrementally steeper and more difficult.
The worst thing the Democrats could do now is believe this story and give the GOP the opportunity to make up -- in every sense of the term -- their lost ground. We have already had a few whiffs of the Swift Boaters waiting in the wings, and the governor's campaign in Ohio is already setting records for slimery, not to mention the Missouri Senate race (see below).
The biggest advantage the Democrats have, of course, is that this election has become a national election and a referendum on the leadership of both the president and the Republican majority in Congress and the Senate. This is the last thing the GOP wants, so you're going to hear a lot of them quoting their late nemesis, Tip O'Neill, that "all politics is local," and therefore the election for governor in Michigan or the Senate in Florida or the Ohio 5th district isn't about the war in Iraq or the national energy policy. Unfortunately, though, the GOP basically made those issues local; a funeral in Albuquerque for a soldier killed in Iraq makes the war very local, and $3 a gallon for gas at the station on the corner brings it home, too.
The challenge for the Democrats is to make the election a referendum on the one-party rule we've had since 2001 on a national level and make the case that change can be wrought at the local level. Oh, and actually do something once they're in office about these issues and not turn it into a free-for-all of revenge against the Bush administration. That's not to say there shouldn't be legitimate inquiry and oversight; what I'm talking about is looney excessiveness along the lines of Rep. Dan Burton shooting a melon to prove that Vince Foster was murdered. We had a taste of that during the Clinton second term and look at how much of the peoples' work got done then.
The surest way to capitalize on winning back a majority for the Democrats and get a Democrat in the White House in 2008 is to get to work.
