Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 3/15/2010-3/18/2010. Registered Voters. MoE 2.8% (Last week's results in parentheses):
| FAVORABLE | UNFAVORABLE | NET CHANGE |
---|
PRESIDENT OBAMA | 53 (54) | 41 (42) | 0 |
| | | |
PELOSI: | 37 (35) | 55 (56) | +3 |
REID: | 27 (26) | 66 (67) | +2 |
McCONNELL: | 21 (20) | 63 (63) | +1 |
BOEHNER: | 20 (19) | 62 (63) | +2 |
| | | |
CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: | 39 (38) | 58 (60) | +3 |
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: | 24 (23) | 67 (68) | +2 |
| | | |
DEMOCRATIC PARTY: | 39 (40) | 55 (56) | 0 |
REPUBLICAN PARTY: | 30 (29) | 66 (67) | +2 |
Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.
Well, this qualifies as a "first". I am willing to be corrected, but to my memory this is the first time that the week-to-week trends in the Daily Kos State of the Nation tracking poll show absolutely no one losing ground. Everyone either holds steady or gains 1-3 points.
Perhaps counterintuitively to some folks in the chattering classes (who have been convinced for months that health care was a polling albatross for Democrats), the two biggest gainers are Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats, who both pick up three points of net favorability.
Looking at the Congressional Dems, it is worth noting that this improvement over the past two weeks (the Dems on the Hill also saw a two point boost last week) is largely due to the base coming home, perhaps in anticipation of passage of a health care reform package:
Change in Net Favorability for Congressional Democrats, From 3/11/10 to 3/18/10, By Party/Ideology
Among Democrats: +10 (from 62/35 to 67/30)
Among Independents: +5 (from 33/65 to 35/62)
Among Republicans: +/-0 (from 12/87 to 11/86)
Another potential benefit of this health care endgame for Democrats is a substantial increase in voter intensity, although the Democrats still lag well behind the GOP in this regard.
Last week, the percentage of Democrats either certain or likely to vote languished at just 40%, with 32% saying they were either unlikely to vote or certain not to vote. In just one week, that spread is now 45/31, a net improvement of six points for Democrats in just seven days.
Thus far, the net effect of health care reform moving to the very front of the political conversation again has been a consolidation of both party's core supporters. Since the Dems were lagging so badly in this regard, that presumably is a net win for them. However, it is not showing up as of yet in the generic ballot calculations: the Democratic lead there remains steady for the third consecutive week, with the Dems leading 47-44 over the GOP, a three-point margin. This mirrors the most recent 2010 tracking poll by Gallup, who got the exact same numbers earlier this week.