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| 5/24 |
| 2006/9/5-7 [Politics/Domestic/Immigration, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:44273 Activity:nil |
9/5 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14673701 http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/04/poll.election/index.html Alright guys. November's coming. Bad news for the Republican. \_ If there's only one Republican, I can see where there is a problem. \_ All politics are local and current. Never cry for joy or for pain based on random polls months ahead of an election. |
| 5/24 |
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| www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14673701 com Highlights 'Mortgage moms' may star in midterm vote With wages stagnant and debt growing, Democrats see an opportunity By By Jeffrey H Birnbaum and Chris Cillizza The Washington Post BURLINGTON, Ky. Dale and Sharon Condit and their two young sons need more room but can't seem to sell their current home - on the market now for three months. Full politics coverage In a year when politics is being roiled by angry debates over the Iraq war and immigration, it might seem odd to imagine the midterm elections being waged over square footage and closet space. But these are parts of a lifestyle that Sharon Condit, a deputy clerk of court, describes as dogged by a sense of limits: "We have dreams of this future, but we can't get it right now." This gap in expectations, a source of anxiety for the Condits, is a source of opportunity for former representative Ken Lucas, a Democrat who is trying to win back Kentucky's 4th Congressional District from incumbent Republican Geoff Davis. Attitudes about the economy - "People are being pushed up against a ceiling," said Lucas. "They feel trapped" - are part of the reason the Democrat is in a neck-and-neck race in a district President Bush won by 27 percentage points in 2004. At first glance, the economy's role in this year's midterm elections is a puzzle. Economic growth and unemployment are at levels that in past years would have been a clear political asset for the party in power. But one layer down in the statistics, the answer is more clear. Flat wages and rising debt nationally have converged to leave millions of middle-class households feeling acutely vulnerable to bumps in their financial planning. The most visible of these are rising energy prices and a softening housing market. A less obvious but powerful variable is the interest paid by people carrying credit card debt or mortgages whose monthly payments vary with interest rates. People buffeted by these trends have given rise to a new and volatile voting block. When added to the growing opposition to the war in Iraq, he said, worry about this economic crunch "is creating a political environment that is not that friendly to the party in power." Every election cycle has its own important set of undecided, or swing, voters. In 2000, it was the "soccer moms," targeted by both parties with appeals based on education and quality-of-life concerns. In 2004, it was the security moms, normally Democratic-trending women whose concerns about terrorism helped give Bush his margin of victory. This year could mark the emergence of what might be called mortgage moms - voters whose sense of well-being is freighted with anxiety about their families' financial squeeze. Democrats are betting that this factor is strong enough to trump security or cultural values issues. Kentucky's 4th District, stretching across nearly 200 miles of the state's northern tier, offers a useful window into whether the strategy can work. It includes coal-mining precincts with an Appalachian character, affluent Cincinnati suburbs along the Ohio River, and rural farmland that looks and feels more like the Midwest than the South. Democrats see reason for optimism Democrats here typically do not stress liberalism. Lucas, for instance, opposes abortion rights and gun-control measures. But in Kentucky and elsewhere, Democrats have some reason for optimism about the traction they might gain from the economy. Polls show that swing voters - the category that candidates most want to attract - are unhappier than the rest of the population about their economic circumstances. According to a recent survey by Bloomberg News and the Los Angeles Times, six in 10 self-described independents said the economy was doing badly, and seven in 10 said the country was on the wrong track. A Fox News poll, taken at the end of last month, showed that 23 percent of Americans consider the economy the most important factor they will weigh when they cast their ballot in November - more than those who cited Iraq (14 percent) or terrorism (12 percent). |
| www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/04/poll.election/index.html Most Popular Voters are anti-incumbent and angry, new poll finds Adjust font size: Decrease font Decrease font Enlarge font Enlarge font WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Most Americans are angry about "something" when it comes to how the country is run, and they are more likely than in previous years to vote for a challenger this November, a new poll suggests. A majority of Americans surveyed -- and a higher percentage than recorded during the same time last year -- said things in the United States are going "badly." Among this year's respondents, 29 percent said "pretty badly" and 25 percent -- up from 15 percent a month ago -- answered "very badly." By comparison, 37 percent described the way things are going as "fairly well," and 9 percent answered "very well." Of these people, 76 percent said there was "something" to be angry about in the country today. By comparison, 59 percent felt that way when polled in February. Watch Bill Schneider's take on angry voters -- 1:40) Only 21 percent said they were "generally content" in the latest poll. Nine percent said they considered the economy to be "very good," a number unchanged from a June CNN poll. But the number who considered conditions "somewhat good" dropped from 42 percent to 35 percent over the same period. The number of respondents who consider the economy "somewhat poor" rose from 31 percent to 34 percent, and the number who called the economy "very poor" jumped from 16 percent to 22 percent. A majority -- 55 percent -- said they are more likely to back a challenger in races on this year's ballot. Such anti-incumbent sentiment is higher than the 48 percent recorded as "pro-challenger" in a similar survey in 1994, when the GOP took control of both houses of Congress. Nonetheless, 48 percent said that, if most of the present members of Congress were replaced with new members, there would be no difference. By contrast, 42 percent said such a scenario would change Congress for the better, and 7 percent said it would change Congress for the worse. The results, based on a half-sample of 1,004 adult Americans polled by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN Wednesday through Saturday have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 45 percentage points. More than 60 percent of those surveyed said government policies need either major changes or a complete overhaul, while 30 percent said minor changes were needed. The economy topped the list of respondents' concerns, with 28 percent calling it the most important issue when deciding how to cast their ballots. Coming second was Iraq at 25 percent, followed by terrorism (18 percent), moral issues (15 percent) and immigration (14 percent). Watch Bush dispute idea that Iraq is in civil war - 4:09) Democrats lead Republicans by a 10-point margin, 53 to 43 percent, among likely voters asked which party's congressional candidate they would support in November, and Democrats held a 56-40 lead on the same question among registered voters. The survey has a sampling error of 3 percentage points among the full group and 4 percentage points among likely voters. Nearly half of the respondents -- 49 percent -- said they considered the GOP the party of strong leadership. But 56 percent said they considered the Democrats the party of change, with 49 percent considering them the more forward-looking party. Oil discovery may be biggest since Alaska Chevron and its partners have successfully extracted oil from a test well in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, an achievement that could be the biggest ... |