The results are from a partisan Democracy Corps poll, so apply all appropriate caveats, but…
There’s something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP. This is apparent in seniors’ party affiliation and vote intention, in their views on the Republican Party and its leaders, and in their surprising positions on jobs, health care, retirement security, investment economics, and the other big issues that will likely define the 2014 midterm elections.
We first noticed a shift among seniors early in the summer of 2011, as Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare became widely known (and despised) among those at or nearing retirement. Since then, the Republican Party has come to be defined by much more than its desire to dismantle Medicare. To voters from the center right to the far left, the GOP is now defined by resistance, intolerance, intransigence, and economics that would make even the Robber Barons blush. We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens…
We all know that the Republicans have done a great job of gerrymandering the House districts, which is supposedly going to give them an impregnable majority at least after the next census in 2020. However, that analysis is based on demographic groups remaining fairly stable in their partisan preferences.
—In 2010, seniors voted for Republicans by a 21 point margin (38 percent to 59 percent). Among seniors likely to vote in 2014, the Republican candidate leads by just 5 points (41 percent to 46 percent.)
—When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives at the beginning of 2011, 43 percent of seniors gave the Republican Party a favorable rating. Last month, just 28 percent of seniors rated the GOP favorably. This is not an equal-opportunity rejection of parties or government — over the same period, the Democratic Party’s favorable rating among seniors has increased 3 points, from 37 percent favorable to 40 percent favorable.
If these numbers are real, a lot of supposedly safe seats are not really safe. DCCC Chairman Steve Israel needs to get busy recruiting candidates, because it looks like a strong well-funded candidate can compete much better than we thought in a lot of House districts.
I’m an old person, at 61. My wife is 64. We are strongly pro-gay rights. Much less so on immigration stuff, as many know. We contribute to Planned Parenthood, I ran as a D.
There are a lot of people like me. Those who came of age at 18 in 1970 are in some cases conservative, but many are like me – I have never voted R, and probably won’t for this brand of the R party. I cannot make myself stupid enough to vote to destroy public schools, elevate corporations to sit at the right hand of God, and deny science.
Now if we can get Democrats to actually push jobs for Americans….
If these numbers are real, a lot of supposedly safe seats are not really safe. DCCC Chairman Steve Israel needs to get busy recruiting candidates, because it looks like a strong well-funded candidate can compete much better than we thought in a lot of House districts.
LOL!!!!!! Even if he did get busy, do you have faith in him recruiting good candidates? Not me!! Also, too, your post is good news unless the GOP comes to their senses and helps pass that white whale known as “The Grand Bargain.”
If’n the Democrats don’t step on their own best campaign strategy, yes we could. Harkin’s “Expand Social Security” would be a winning nationalization of the 2014 campaign. And if implemented would get the economy out of the doldrums.
I agree. Campaign on increasing SSS and Medicare and you win BIG. Have the numbers to back it up. To pay for it campaign on increasing the 250000 limit on SSS taxes.
You would win 50 more seats in the house, maybe more, and carry 45 states.
But Hillary won’t do it. That makes her vulnerable. If Biden has any guts at all, he would run on increasing SSS to force her to the left.
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But with the Republicans coming after Social Security and, especially, Medicare so hard, would it really be best to go on the offense with an expansion message, as opposed to being the Defenders of Social Security?
Gee willikers, if only there was some sort of election in between 2011 and now where we could see how old people voted. Maybe even have Paul Ryan promoted to national candidate status, just to see exactly what would happen? Alas, no such social experiment exists.
It’s too early for this propaganda shit. The election is fifteen months away…
You make a very good point.
However, it is best to compare 2010 to 2014, rather than 2012. Presidential turnout looks completely different, and Obama is not on the ticket next time around.
Yes, and unless Deval Patrick is the Democratic Presidential candidate, then the Republicans will be running against either Hillary, or some white female, or white male.
Obama absolutely hangs over the 2014 elections. That second midterm represents the ability to shovel dirt on an outgoing president, not give him a second lease on life. Not to mention, the president’s own party is always divided on the reality of there being another train coming.
Even in the best case scenario, where the Republicans turned the country against them in a quest to impeach Clinton, Democrats only won like ten seats fifteen years ago. That’d be nice to have, but not enough for Pelosi.
The GOP would have to invent literal death panels and euthanasia camps to produce the kind of voter swing you’re envisioning.
Just look at the numbers–two years ago the Republicans had a 6 point favorability advantage among seniors, and now the Democrats have a 12 point advantage. That’s a big enough shift that you can’t just write it off by talking about what happened 15 years ago.
Besides, do you really think the Republicans were more loathsome in 1998 than they are now? Then you had them turning the country against them by shutting down the government and impeaching the president over a blow job, but now you’ve got them turning the country against them by expressing contempt for half the population, being more and more openly racist and misogynist, refusing to even allow votes on bills that enjoy wide popular support, going around boasting about how they’ve paralyzed the government, threatening to shut it down again and maybe destroy the economy while they’re at it, and all the while it’s not like they wouldn’t love to impeach Obama if they could only come up with a halfway plausible pretext.
So of course Obama will hang over the 2014 elections, but so will the stench of right-wing extremism that responds to victory and defeat alike by becoming more and more extreme.
But Carville and Greenberg aren’t comparing 2010 to 2014. They are comparing the actual election results from 2010 to a poll of “likely voters” more than a year before the next election.
Carville is a partisan polemicist. Like most polemics he knows how to get creative with numbers. Don’t bet your kid’s college fund on his predictions, because they are nothing more than cheerleading.
I’m 65 and always considered myself an independent before 2009 when the GOP let it’s dark side walk the streets openly. I always voted Democratic at higher levels, but sometimes did vote GOP at lower levels if the candidate was reasonable and more qualified. No frigging more.
What is the deal about Steve Israel? I was always more aware of Pelosi and thought the DCCC was much more effective to me as a voter than the DSCC.
But I remember reading a post, and I think it was here, talking about Israel not putting up a good Dem candidate in an easy pickup. I think it was in NY. I apparently didn’t link to it, sorry.
Is he obstructing the DCCC?
Yes, he is. Notice how there wasn’t anyone serious challenging Peter King last year? Or ever notice how we rarely pick up seats in Florida?
I thought US reps put up were due to state dem parties,not the DCCC. I thought the DCCC chose to back them or not using their limited funds for fights they thought they could win. It seems to me that I remember candidates had to show winability by fundraising, maybe getting endorsements.
You are saying the DCCC controls the state parties or just doesn’t put pressure on them?
They don’t control the state parties but they certainly could pressure them.
Booman, I wish you would weigh in on this. What is the role of the DCCC in state politics. I would assume there is negotiating, talking back and forth.
It would be helpful to know how it works with DSCC, DCCC, DNC and state parties.
I worked for a qualified, charismatic candidate in the 2012 election. She got more help from DFA than from the DCCC. Also, we begged Emily’s List, but nada. Neither will ever see another dollar from me. The state party apparatus seemed to focus more on Donnelly than anyone else. We have all new, younger-by-a-generation state leadership now – Evan Bayh’s man is gone. I’m hoping for much better in 2014.
I’ve said it here before, and I will say it again…..you know those white people who did not vote for Romney, but stayed home? It was because of Ryan and his plans to cut SSS and Medicare. That is also why Romney hid Ryan, and why towards the end they were not seen together much. Yet most of those whites could not vote for a black guy. I call them ‘grandma’ voters, because my grandmother (rest in peace grandma!) would never vote for a person who went after Medicare, but she would NEVER, EVER vote for a person of color (look up Ventura County, 70’s/ 80’s version). She would stay home.
The gerrymander was always something of a short term effort, that was not going to be effective once a white runs on the democratic ticket. Have a white democrat run on increasing Medicare and SSS and he/she would win 45 states, and pick up 50 seats in the house. The republicans have put all their eggs in the same lily white basket. It actually made them MORE vulnerable, not less.
Yet they can’t back down on SSS and Medicare being socialism. Because it is, and they are idiots.
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Tom Delay’s mid-decade redistricting was supposed to guarantee the Republicans control of the House indefinitely, too.
That was right before the 2006 elections.
And the reason it failed was because of shifts in voting patterns within established voting blocs, just like this.