This picture is worth..
.. a landslide victory.
But, there is a lot of work to do before we can get there.
The
pollingreport.com graphic above comes from the
Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll (
pdf file) that was released yesterday. From the pdf file, here is the breakdown of those numbers along party lines:
Favorable Unfavorable Can't
say Never Heard
Democratic Party 47% 37 15
-
Breakdown among
Democrats 78% 13
9 -
Republicans 14% 72 14
-
Independents 45% 28% 26%
1
Republican Party 38% 51 12
-
Breakdown among
Democrats 8% 84
7 -
Republicans 82% 12
6 -
Independents 27% 49% 22%
2
The key statistics from this are the two "Independents" rows. Independents are strongly in favor of the Democratic party vis-a-vis the Republicans party. But, still about 20-25% of them can't make up their minds.
The aggregate numbers from this poll need to taken with a pinch of salt for the following reason. At the end of the pdf file, one will note that the party identification numbers are heavily skewed towards Democrats:
Party Identification (FNOD/8AUG06):
Democrat (42%), Republican (34%), Rest (24%)
Recent Rasmussen's numbers on party identification show a smaller 4% edge for the Democrats, and a lot large unaffiliateds:
Partisan Trends: Republicans Near Two-Year Low
36.8% Democrats, 32.8% Republicans, 30.4% Unaffiliated.
These numbers look more realistic.
Historic trends of favorables for both parties can be found in this pollingreport.com archive: Political Parties.
The favorability numbers are very significant from the standpoint of the 2006 election, as they presumably drive the strong 18% advantage the Democrats have fared in generic congressional ballot question posed:
FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. Aug. 8-9, 2006. N=900 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.
"Thinking ahead to this November's elections, if the congressional election were held today, would you vote for the Democratic candidate in your district or the Republican candidate in your district?" [7/11-7/12 results in parenthesis]
Democrat: 48 (42)
Republican: 30 (34)
Unsure: 22 (25)
See Jonathan Singer
The 18% Democratic advantage has been corroborated another by an AP-Ipsos poll, released yesterday:
On the generic question of whether voters would back the Democrat or Republican, 55 percent of registered voters chose the Democrat and 37 percent chose the Republican, a slight increase for Democrats from last month.
See Jonathan Singer
FYI, these are key pages to track as the election nears:
1.
Election 2006 Generic ballot Table
2. Election 2006 trends
3. Politics & Policy steering page
(FWIW, FNC Poll Archive page).
So far, so good. But where do things go from here?
Chris Bowers offers some excellent advice:
Be Prepared For Republicans To Close Gap
by Chris Bowers, Fri Aug 11, 2006 at 12:35:08 PM EST
Bowers argues that this election will tighten up, and identifies the following aspects along which the Republicans will attempt to gain against the Democrats:
1. Money
2. Noise Machine
3. Conservatives coming home
4. Gas Prices
5. October Surprise
Check out Bowers' post after going over the present one.
Let us now take a closer look at:
The Generic Ballot Breakdown
Democrat Republican
Other/Undecided
All 48% 30
22
Democrats 89% 2
9
Republicans 7% 79
14
Independents 38% 14
47
The Key Statistic: That last 47% number wee see in this table, namely, the percentage of independents that still can't make up their mind in the generic ballot is the most significant number for the Democrats to harness this election.
The 14% Other/Undecideds in the Republican row is also important for how the aggerate numbers will break, but these may eventually break for the Republican as pointed out by Bowers. Note, however that this number is dwarfed by the 47% for independents (even after factoring in the parity of Republicans (34%) over Independents (24%) in FNOD's sample).
IMO, if we get a strong majority of those 47% to go Democratic, the Democrats will easily regain majority in the house, and perhaps stand a chance to take the Senate back as well.
What needs to be done to secure a strong showing at the polling booths in November?
At the party level, the DNC, DSCC, DCCC, Reid, Pelosi need to coordinate a "message machine" geared to defeat the Republican memes (which will almost certainly revolve around fear mongering on the terrorism issue. See this internal Republican polling and memo obtained yesterday by US News (pdf), H/T Jonathan Singer for what they're scheming).
Also, hopefully, the party brass will work together to gently persuade Sen. Joe Lieberman to gracefully step down from the CT-Sen race so that he is not used by the Republicans as a pivoting point to trash the Democratic party at large. As has been suggested by some, perhaps Joe is looking for a more dignified exit.
What can we do? Well, duh, let's step on it, and Hit The Ground Running!.
Canvas, Canvas, and Canvas!
The DKOP elections page has useful information about the election. One can identify local races of interest (if you don't know them already) from there. DNC's 50 state strategy page, and Barry Welsh's 50-state tracker are useful resources as well.
We can perhaps use the DKOP page (useful abbreviation for Dkosopedia) as our point of information coordination.
If you need inspiration for getting going, check out PsiFighter's amazing diaries about his incredible work canvassing for Ned Lamont thus far. Borrow pictures from there,
Crash'em, already!