Tag: Campaign 2012
Charlie Cook: Swing Voters’ Shift Back to Center Worries Republicans
I would be surprised if either party picked up or lost more than 10 seats, something like that. Democrats need a 25 seat net gain to get their majority back in the House. And I think that’s awfully hard. They may pick up five or 10; they may lose five or 10. I don’t see a lot of change in the House of Representatives right now.
Based on current trends and past performance — the record of the parties’ gains and losses in the House in past presidential elections — chances that Democrats will take back the House next year remain statistically unlikely.
But statistics have their limits as predictors. Events — natural disasters, wars, economic downturns and the like — can change the political landscape seemingly overnight, as can human folly and hubris.
Now, in a column published in the National Journal this week, Cook says recent developments, particularly in the tea party-controlled U.S. House, are starting to worry top Republicans:
Rumblings: The Tea Party’s Over My Friend
Dumb gets old quick, according to a recent CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll. The better we know the Tea Party, the less we like it. Here’s how those surveyed rated the movement that gave us Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, former Alaska partial-term Gov. Sarah Palin, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, among others:
Favorable: 32%
Unfavorable: 47%
Never Heard Of: 7%
No Opinion: 14%
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight took these results and combined them with earlier polls to show a trend tea baggers can’t deny. With each passing day, their approval numbers go down, down, down.
Silver concludes that Republicans, who scored 44% favorable and 48% unfavorable in the same CNN poll, have the most to lose if the tea baggers get dunked.
I’ve long been of the view that the Tea Party, despite nominating poor candidates in a couple of key races, was a significant net positive for the G.O.P. in 2010, both because it contributed to the “enthusiasm gap” and because it helped an unpopular Republican Party to re-brand itself in never-out-of-style conservative draping. But if the Tea Party ain’t over yet, the point in time at which it was an electoral asset for Republicans soon may be.
Gingrich Favorability Drops 23 Points
-31
Drop in percentage points of voters’ favorable opinion of Newt Gingrich over the past two years. According to Public Policy Polling, Gingrich’s favorability in April 2009 was -8 or 36/44. Today it’s 26/57, representing a 23 point drop. “His net drop has been 20 points with Democrats, 25 points with Republicans, and 33 points with independents,” according to PPP.
Traveling Doesn’t Boost Palin
12%
Portion of likely Republican primary voters who support Sarah Palin, as of March. In January, 19% said they would vote for Palin. Meanwhile, 5% support Michele Bachmann and 1% wrote in Donald Trump as their preferred candidate. The poll indicates that Palin’s Israel trip, wherein she claimed to fly the Israeli flag in both her home and her office, failed to make her look more presidential.
In New Hampshire, Bachmann Flunks American History Again
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN: What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty … You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord. And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors the very first price that had to be paid to make this the most magnificent nation that has ever arisen in the annals of man in 5,000 years of recorded history.
The battles of Lexington and Concord took place in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
