The MyDD / Courage Campaign Polling Project has released the results of their analysis of the Francine Busby race in CA-50. There is nothing in it to suggest that the race was affected by vulnerable voting machines. On the other hand, that is not what they set out to discover. They wanted to know why Busby lost. Their conclusions are interesting, and give me further reason to fear third party candidates in the midterm elections.
Chris’s conclusions can be summarized as follows:
The Democratic base is very energized, the Republican base is a little depressed, a little frustrated, but it is holding. Independents are just despondent. And given a choice between the Dems and the GOP they are staying home or voting third party.
Voter registration in the district is 29.7% Democratic, 44.5% Republican, and 25.8% Independent / Other (Source: California Secretary of State). The partisan breakdown of the MyDD / Courage Campaign poll, which has the final vote results within one-tenth of one-percent for all candidates, was 39% registered Democrats, 43% registered Republicans, and 18% Independents / Others (see Q5). In other words, Democrats turned out in force, Republicans were slightly below par, and Independents barely showed up at all…
While Francine Busby won a plurality of the Independent / Other vote (she received 40% to 34% for Bilbray) (Q5), given low Independent turnout and the heavily Republican nature of the district, this margin was insufficient to win the election. One major problem for Busby was that third-party candidates received a surprising 26% of the Independent vote (Q5).
Other polls questions revealed that the Culture of Corruption message did not resonate at all because swing-voters consider both parties corrupt and consider the Dems incapable of fixing the problem. They also are not interested in hearing about legislation that Dems hope to pass, as they don’t believe anything can be enacted with Bush in power.
Ironically, Bowers concludes the Democrats will do best by promising a wholly negative campaign. By that, I mean, swing voters will respond to promises to thwart Bush’s agenda, but they simply don’t believe anything positive can be accomplished. As Chris says, “Put simply, voters see the current majority party as incapable of governing, and Democrats incapable of stopping them from making mistakes.”
This makes it all the more likely that swing-voters will stay home in an already low turnout midterm election, or that they will register a protest vote.
Let me offer some of my own analysis here. First, if there is going to be a low turnout of swing voters then that argues ever more strongly against running a centrist, DLC campaign. The only apparent confluence of interests between the Dem base and the independent voter appears to be extreme distress and discomfort with the Bush agenda. Swing voters are not responding to positive messaging. They are responding to tough talk about standing up to Bush.
In this atmosphere, it appears that people are less interested in hearing about what the Dems can do to provide health care, better education, or control gas prices, than they are in registering their disgust in some way. This bodes very badly for Joe Lieberman in the general election.
For me the best strategy appears to be to attack the Republicans for their lack of oversight (Rubber Stamp Congress), the institution of Congress as corrupt (anti-incumbent), and whip up the base with tough talk about Bush and some populism (class warfare, if we must).
That is my recommendation, but there are also issues specific to each district and issues that will be of special concern to the electorate this fall. Gas prices can be tied into hurricane season and linked to global warming, and peace in the Middle East. This can also be tied into the always popular environmental arguments.
Energy independence is probably the strongest issue for the Democrats this fall, because it ties into so many other things that are disturbing the nation.
