Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos and SEIU (6/16-19, MoE: ±3.1, registered voters, Obama trendlines 6/9-12, all others 6/2-5):
As you can see, the numbers on the questions we ask regularly barely shifted over the last two weeks — in other words, a totally normal and expected result. (The only notable change belongs to Nancy Pelosi; I'll be really curious to see if she's on any kind of upward trend, but she's pretty much stayed in the same band over our last five polls.)
I do want to revisit another set of numbers that does typically see some movement, though: party self-identification. As I discussed last week, sometimes people's attitudes about elected officials change on their own, while sometimes they change in concert with their views of themselves. There are many reasons for these shifts, but one thing pollsters and political scientists know well is that there are very few "true independents" — folks who are equally apt to vote for both parties. Most self-described indies actually lean one way or the other, which means that with the right nudge, they could very well start identifying themselves as either Democrats or Republicans.
But what's really interesting is that in our poll, those nudges (whatever they may be) seem to keep shoving people back and forth between D and I — Republicans just aren't budging. Take a look at this visualization created by Tableau Software:
As you can see, a chunk of voters keep migrating back and forth between labelling themselves as independents versus Democrats, while Republicans seldom waver. Sometimes there are clear explanations for this: That hump at the start of May was undoubtedly related to the death of Osama bin Laden. But the causes of the other gyrations are less apparent. These trends do bear watching, though, because they suggest that there's a portion of the electorate that Democrats can really activate with the right message. This group obviously leans D to begin with, but making sure they
vote D on election day will be key.