If Republicans Really Win By 10 Points…
Gallup has some new polling out today that is undoubtedly sending shockwaves and warning signs throughout Washington tonight. The headline: Republicans now hold a ten-point lead in the generic ballot voting (51 to 41). A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a Gallup poll that showed the GOP up seven (50 to 43). At that time, those numbers were all-time highs and lows for Republicans and Democrats, respectively. Those previous records are now out the record.
And for the record, the greatest spread for the GOP in 1994 was a five-point advantage. Like I said, this is uncharted territory for Republicans.
Will Republicans win by 10 points? I kind of doubt it. Gallup polls historically fluctuate and have done so this summer but this just adds to the sense that Republicans not only have a good chance of winning the House, pretty soon they will be considered favorites to do so.
But, here are three things that will happen if the 10-point lead hold up:
1) Republicans will capture the House rather easily. I think the Republicans would regain the majority if they won around 52.5-53 percent of the vote. Add a couple more points to that total and you’re looking at another 15 or so seats for the GOP in all likelihood.
2) Travis Childers is gone. No way he can survive that type of environment and there is not much analysis needed.
3) Steven Palazzo likely wins. Simply going by these national numbers, and the national tendency of House elections, political winds say Gene Taylor would have a tough time surviving in that type of environment.
From your page to God’s ear, as the saying goes. However good as it looks for the GOP at this time don’t begin to think the Dems are not working up something to off-set this growing trend; and that is what should concern us all at this time. Will it be engagement in a war with Iraq alongside Israel? Or maybe an assult on the Mexican border with illegal aliens creating a national emergency? Whatever it is they are planning to create doubt about changing horses in mid-stream and to fan the fire of uncertanity(The Dogs of War)they will do it before they allow the drip-drip-drip of their strength slowly bring them toward a sure demise. And Palazzo…well he will do better in the rural areas than along the Coast. Just a drive between Gulfport and Bay St. Louis will quickly demonstrate his strength….there are no Palazzo signs, just wall-to-wall Gene Taylor, big and small visible pledges of support from folks who have managed to look the other way when Gene goes off half-cocked as he has so many times and who has managed to re-create more definitions of the word arrogant. He has no favor with the Democratic party: they clearly recognize him as a moderate and a nut. Thus he has no senority of merit to warrant his nearly 20 years in office. But he is home town and the Western Coast will step up again and vote across party lines to see he is protected. The question is will enough folks outside Gene’s protected areas go to the polls Nov. 2nd and will their numbers be enough to off-set his base. Taylor is strong where the numbers are greatest. And it doesn’t hurt that his chief aide in his home base area is closely related to a federal judge either.
It will take more than an R by your name to unseat Gene Taylor. To date, the only reason I have been given to cast my vote for Steven Palazzo is that he is not Gene Taylor. I am confident that Nancy Pelosi is gone. She will not be speaker come January.
I am still waiting to have Steven respond to questions that are important to me on why I should vote for him. I have not had questions answered via email and I have had my questions on facebook deleted within minutes of posting them. An incumbent can hide and still win but a challenger has to endure the slings and arrows of battle and Steven is not doing what needs to be done to earn votes. But then again, he is not Gene Taylor.
nice website, guys. just found it and will bookmark. i’m a liberal, but you write well and keep up on the locals.
here’s my take. the gallup poll is nice, but it’s .. august. in july, gallup had democrats up by 7%. so take your pick, depending on your ideology, but i don’t put much into any polls before september-octoberish and then only considering overall trends.
trend right now tentatively support gop, but in the details, it’s all a southern strategy. they will bump off a few conservative democrats down here, but the strategy doesn’t play so well in liberal to moderate districts (rest of us). the democratic party will be better off without some of the blue dogs — taylor, for instance, or childers — but the wash won’t reach past the old confederacy states. that’s not enough for a majority in the house. it’ll be a better hand for the gop, but no speaker boehner.
Welcome. I do think 10 points is an outlier, but the RCP average is GOP +5 on a mixture of registered and likely voter models (you can add 3 or 4 points to the GOP side on any RV model). Of the past 20 polls on generic ballots, the Democrats have had the lead in exactly one of them.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/generic_congressional_vote-901.html
If this was simply confined to the South, you would not see numbers like this. The truth is the GOP will probably make more gains in the upper South (places like VA, NC), the Midwest (OH, IN, PA, WI, MI) and the West (CO, WA) than the Deep South. All of those places outside the South either voted for Obama or at least had a favorable view of him when he took office. That has plummeted. If you think about it, Obama was never popular in the South so the Blue Dogs won without him anyway.
This includes a number of Democrats who voted for the healthcare bill who will no longer be there. The thinking that it will only be Democrats who vote with the GOP on big issues that are gone is just not true from all polls. In fact, two of the least loyal Democrats are in very good shape- Bobby Bright in AL, Walt Mimick(sp) in Idaho. To say it will be a few seats is extremely wishful thinking. And by the way: I use the liberal blogger Nate Silver at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com for a lot of my analysis.
thanks for the reply brett. i can point to other more recent polls — newsweek has it generic 45/45 — or we can look back at ’94 when the generic was equally split or democrats led slightly until the last month (that didn’t pan out very well in the results). it depends on which poll one contests; and i’m not contesting polls but rather their particular relevance by november. there are also (recent) polls in which some 30% of americans identify themselves as republicans. (republican identification has only increased in the south.)
the southern strategy i refer to is a national campaign, not to demonize local dems for their actual votes (say with obama agenda, which they mostly didn’t support) but to tie them, guilt by association, to local moods about national policy, that is obvious. thus “radicals” like the 80 year old nancy pelosi or the strange innuendos about “obamacare” are driving local elections based on national themes erected by palin, beck, newt, etc. that drive the base, not the moderates or attainable dems. this plays well in the south. but it’s not a winning argument outside of here — and it’s difficult for the national gop to juggle two themes at once.
thus my point is, it will be interesting to see where these +5 GOP averages fall out geographically. you may be right, but i think history shows the prevailing rhetoric only finds a home in certain nooks and crannies.
Does Bill Marcy stand a chance?
I think Childers is gone, no matter what!