Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Categories
2018 2020 Activism Budget Civil Rights Congressional Races Economy ECOT Education Environment Fair Elections Federal Governor's Race Governor DeWine Guns Health ICYMI Justice Labor LGBT Ohio Legislature Ohio Legislature Plunderbund Plunderbund Action Portman Presidential Safety Senate Race State State Government Statehouse Races Statehouse Races Swing State Voices Taxes and Spending Trump Women's RightsFacebook
PPP poll puts political environment in perspective; this ain’t 1994.
There are many reasons to believe that this current environment isn’t a Republican version of 2008 or a repeat of 1994.
The GOP presently has a substantially smaller enthusiasm gap (8 points compared to 19 for Brown and 26 for Christie) than races that only got them five to four points. In 1994, the GOP saw a last minute surge in the polls their way. 2006 seems to be that they peaked last winter.
Anyone remember the Tea Party? I live in SWO which is Tea Party Central between the Dayton and Cincinnati Tea Parties which were called the largest in the State. When was the last Tea Party rally you recall that wasn’t us talking about Sonny Thomas? Conservatives plotted to have an estate tax repeal referendum and a state constitutional amendment to “repeal” health care reform by creating a federalism conflict in an effort to turn out the Tea Party vote this fall.
Well, the health care initiative failed to meet the ballot. The estate tax effort appears to have fallen short as well:
So instead of kicking off the Labor Day general election season with a massive Tea Party effort to push an anti-Obama Care constitutional amendment and a repeal of the “death tax” to victory in November (with the GOP statewide ticket riding along) what is the Tea Party reduced to doing instead?
They’re going to an amusement park and holding a cookout. Six months ago, if you drove in my county, you’d see so many Tea Party yard signs you’d thought an election was days away. Now, that same organization hasn’t updated their website since May. The Tea Party was an overhyped organization, now there is a question whether it’s even still an organization.
While the PPP poll shows Independents favoring the GOP by seven points, that’s less than how much Independents favored the GOP going into 1994. Furthermore, the number of Obama supporters saying they’ll vote Republican in November is equal to the number of McCain voters who say they’ll vote Democratic. (Sorry, Keeling, you’re wrong again.)
Despite low approval ratings (33%), Democrats in Congress still have a substantially higher approval ratings than Congressional Republicans (20%). In case you’re wondering, that’s actually lower than the when the Republicans controlled Congress.
Will the Republicans gain seats in Congress? Sure. After two straight cycles of picking up around two dozen seats, there are hardly any competitive seats left for the Democrats to pick up that they haven’t already, and there are a bunch of Democratic seats we wouldn’t have picked up but for the political tide in our favor in 2006 & 2008. But the absence of a tide in favor of one party is not evidence of a tide in favor of the other. That is the classic misread in the political narrative in Ohio and nationally.