If you hadn't noticed, the post FoleyGate polls are so bad for Republicans they're grasping for 'Mushroom Clouds'. Here's a round-up of the good poll news for Democrats from the past week. Ride the "Democratic Wave"...
BREAKING--New House polls will show looming Democratic landslide The new Majority Watch will be released in a few minutes. Based on 63 polls of 48 districts of 1,000 likely voters each, they will show Dems currently ahead in the House by 19 seats, 224-205... It is also a significant increase from the 219-214 seat lead for Democrats from late Aug. and early Sept. This 19-seat doesn't even include seven competitive, Repub-held districts that are currently being polled, and six districts that are currently tied. In fact, perhaps most stunningly, the districts with "safe" leads outside the margins of error break 217-198 in favor of Dems...
Internal Poll Suggests Hastert Could Devastate GOP House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster... "The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker,... And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss...."
Poll: GOP Put Politics Over Safety Most Respondents Think GOP Leaders Knew About Foley's Explicit E-Mails. (CBS) An overwhelming majority of Americans think House Republican leaders put their own political interests ahead of the safety of congressional pages in their handling of the Mark Foley scandal...
Democrats have big lead after sex scandal": polls (Reuters) Dem candidates have a big edge on Repubs one month before elections to decide control of Congress... A USA Today/Gallup poll gave Democrats a 23-point edge on Republicans in the battle for Congress, while a CNN poll gave Democrats a 21-point lead. A ABC News/Washington Post poll found Democrats held a 54-41 percent lead in the congressional horse race, which ABC said was the biggest Democratic lead this close to election day in more than 20 years...
GOP Officials Brace for Loss Of Seven to 30 House Seats Republican campaign officials said yesterday that they expect to lose at least seven House seats and as many as 30 in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, as a result of sustained violence in Iraq and the page scandal involving former GOP representative Mark Foley. Democrats need to pick up 15 seats in the election to take back control of the House after more than a decade of GOP leadership. Two weeks of virtually nonstop controversy over President Bush's war policy and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's handling of the page scandal have forced party leaders to recalculate their vulnerability and placed a growing number of Republican incumbents and open seats at much greater risk...
An analysis by Glen Greenwald - Increasing desperation There is a palpable desperation among Republicans as a result of the Foley scandal and related election troubles, which is giving rise to a significant increase in their willingness to peddle blatantly dishonest and irrational claims in order to save themselves...
Ruy Teixeira gives his take - State of the Race: The Macro and the Micro Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to looking at the outlook for this year’s Congressional elections. One is the “macro” approach, where one looks at a variety of national indicators to gauge the mood of the electorate and how that’s likely to affect the incumbent and challenging parties. The other approach is the “micro” approach, which assesses how each individual House and Senate race is likely to turn out, and aggregates up from that level to assess the likely gains and losses of the two parties. The two methods can tell different stories and, indeed, this spring that’s just what they did. The macro story suggested that the GOP was in terrible shape and likely to get swamped by the Democrats in November. Indeed, by these macro-indicators, as Charlie Cook pointed out at the time, the GOP was at least as badly off as the Democrats were at that point in the 1994 election cycle. The micro story was different, however. Looking at individual races, it was hard to see where the Democrats could pick up enough seats to take back the House, while the Senate looked almost impossible. But that was then. This is now and now the macro and micro data are aligning and pointing in the same direction: big trouble for the Republicans and a good chance that they could lose not only the House—which looks better than 50-50 at this point—but also the Senate...
Support shifting to Democrats, poll shows Democrats have regained a commanding position going into the final weeks of the midterm-election campaigns, with support eroding for Republicans on Iraq, ethics and presidential leadership, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Apparent Republican gains in September have been reversed in the face of mounting U.S. casualties and gloomy forecasts from Iraq and the scandal involving Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who was forced to resign his congressional post over sexually graphic online conversations with former House pages. Approval of Congress has plunged to its lowest level in more than a decade (32 percent), and Americans, by a margin of 54 percent to 35 percent, say they trust Democrats more than Republicans to deal with the biggest problems the nation is confronting. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said congressional Democrats deserve to be reelected next month, but just 39 percent said Republicans deserve to return to office...
Poll: Majority think Hastert should resign A majority of Americans believe the scandal over former Rep. Mark Foley's contacts with teenage congressional pages should cost House Speaker Dennis Hastert his leadership post, according to a CNN poll released Monday. The poll, conducted Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation, found that 52 percent of the 1,028 adults interviewed think Hastert should step aside. Only 31 percent said they think he should keep his post, and 17 percent had no opinion.
NEWSWEEK Poll: GOP in Meltdown A Political Limbo - How low can the Republicans go? Come hell or high water-ran the conventional wisdom-Republicans could rely on two issues to win elections: the war on terror and values. Then came Mark Foley. The drip-drip-drip of scandal surrounding the former Congressman from Florida, which became a deluge this week, now threatens to sink Republican hopes of keeping control of Congress... And that was the good news for the GOP. More worrisome still, the Foley fiasco is jeopardizing the party’s monopoly on faith and power. For the first time since 2001, the NEWSWEEK poll shows that more Americans trust the Democrats than the GOP on moral values and the war on terror. Fully 53 percent of Americans want the Democrats to win control of Congress next month, including 10 percent of Republicans, compared to just 35 percent who want the GOP to retain power. If the election were held today, 51 percent of likely voters would vote for the Democrat in their district versus 39 percent who would vote for the Republican. And while the race is closer among male voters (46 percent for the Democrats vs. 42 percent for the Republicans), the Democrats lead among women voters 56 to 34 percent....
TIME Poll: The Foley Sex Scandal Has Hurt G.O.P. Election Prospects Two-thirds of Americans aware of the lurid e-mails set to congressional pages by a G.O.P congressman believe Republican leaders tried to cover up the scandal — and one quarter of them say the affair makes them less likely to vote for Republican candidates in their districts come November... The poll suggests the Foley affair may have dented Republican hopes of retaining control of Congress in November. Among the registered voters who were polled, 54% said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress, compared with 39% who favored the Republican. That margin may be fueled by the rolling scandal over sexually explicit e-mails sent to teenage pages by Republican Representative Mark Foley. Almost 80% of respondents were aware of the scandal, and only 16% approve of the Republicans' handling of it...
Voters Say Scandals Will Affect Votes (AP) - In yet another hurdle for Republicans, the scandals that have dogged Congress for the past year are prominent in the minds of many voters who say corruption will significantly influence their vote in November. With midterm elections less than five weeks away, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that about half of likely voters say disclosures of corruption and scandal in Congress will be very or extremely important when they enter the voting booth. About two out of three of those voters said they would cast their ballots for Democrats in House races, further complicating the political landscape for Republicans already struggling against negative public perceptions...
