Time For Some Numbers With less than 60 days before the midterms, its time to look at the polls.....and when doing so, personally I always go to Gallup. There are a lot of good ones out there(Quinnepeac springs to mind), but for overall consistency and accuracy, I go to the gold standard. This particular midterm, there are really only two issues that are at the forefront of the voters psyche: The Economy and the Global War On Terror(sorry, man-made climate change wackos....but your issue just cant gain traction.) Gallup asked two questions last week: Which party is better able to protect the US from terrorism and Which party is better equipped to lead the US back to prosperity. My thoughts on how the results would turn out were confirmed....but I did not foretell the magnitude of the margin. On terrorism, Republicans lead Democrats 55% to 32%....a historic margin. On prosperity, the lead is 49-40 in favor of the GOP. What, if anything, do these numbers indicate? Perhaps nothing. I have been watching politics long enough to know it aint over until its over(and sometimes not even then...right. Al Franken?) But also being someone who recognizes patterns and trends, these numbers are reminiscent of the 2010 polls.....when Democrats lost 63 House seats and control of Congress. Because even in this age of the low information voter, some facts cant escape the dumbest among us. For instance, at the beginning of this year, President Obama referred to ISIS as junior varsity. Later in the year he declared them amateurs. Less than three weeks ago the President said he had no strategy to combat ISIS. Less than two weeks ago, President Obama referred to the non-ISIS rebels in Syria as farmers incapable of leading the resistance against ISIS. This past Wednesday night, President Obama’s bold new strategy is to arm the very rebels he says are incapable of leading resistance to ISIS. As for the economy, the party in power has little to gain and a lot to lose by these polling numbers. Just going back to 1998, we see that when the President’s party is underwater on this issue, the results tend to be catastrophic. Ive already mentioned that Republicans had an 8 point lead over the Democrats prior to the 2010 election and gained 63 seats in the House. The Republicans were down by 17 points in 2006 and lost 30 seats. Right now, the GOP’s lead sits at 9 points. Regardless, for someone like me, this November should be fun. And the betting side of me stands a very good chance of being $500 richer by the end of election night. -RJP-
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:59:18 +0000
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