Griper Blade: Two Party System, Four Party Reality

I've never been a big fan of mix-and-match polling. When you take results from one poll and compare them to the results of another, you really can't expect the comparison to work out perfectly. Each polling organization has different criteria for respondents and may or may not probe them -- i.e., ask them "which way they lean" or for "their best guess" when they get a "don't know," for example -- and this can throw the results one way or another. And each pollster has different ways of whittling down their respondents so that the group represents America as a whole. Who's a Republican, who's a Democrat, who's white, who's black, who's what gender, etc. are all demographic questions -- usually published toward the end of the data -- that show those polled reflect the larger populace.

That caveat aside, until someone lets me write a national poll (or until I win the lottery and can afford to do it myself), mixing and matching polling data is going to be about the best I can do. Yesterday, Gallup polling showed that, after flatlining for more than a year, Republicans bumped up on a generic congressional ballot to beat Democrats by 4 points:


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If you look at that graphic, you see Democrats on a slow, steady slide, with Republicans barely moving at all. Republicans aren't looking better to people, Democrats are looking worse. "As was the case in last Tuesday's gubernatorial elections, independents are helping the Republicans' cause," Gallup reports. "In the latest poll, independent registered voters favor the Republican candidate by 52% to 30%. Both parties maintain similar loyalty from their bases, with 91% of Democratic registered voters preferring the Democratic candidate and 93% of Republican voters preferring the Republican."

Now comes the mixing and matching, courtesy of a Pew poll:

[V]oters who plan to support Republicans next year are more enthusiastic than those who plan to vote for a Democrat. Fully 58% of those who plan to vote for a Republican next year say they are very enthusiastic about voting, compared with 42% of those who plan to vote for a Democrat.

"The big enthusiasm gap, you’d think, lends weight to the argument that Dems need to pass a health care bill without delay," writes Greg Sargent. "After all, it seems pretty clear that passing a good health care bill would do a lot more to boost the Dem base’s enthusiasm than showcasing Michele Bachmann’s latest antics could ever accomplish."

Bingo. The Democrats' big problem right now is that they can't get their act together. Republicans are sitting on the sidelines, talking trash about Democrats, while Democrats battle Democrats on the field. Politically, the efforts of Blue Dog Democrats to drag healthcare reform to the right are suicidal -- because, if anyone's going to pay an electoral price here, it's going to be Democrats in swing districts. Their timidity is destroying them... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]