Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 12/7/2009-12/10/2009. All adults. MoE 2% (Last weeks results in parentheses):
| FAVORABLE | UNFAVORABLE | NET CHANGE |
---|
PRESIDENT OBAMA | 53 (52) | 42 (41) | 0 |
| | | |
PELOSI: | 40 (41) | 50 (50) | -1 |
REID: | 29 (30) | 60 (59) | -2 |
McCONNELL: | 17 (16) | 65 (67) | +3 |
BOEHNER: | 15 (14) | 65 (65) | +1 |
| | | |
CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: | 39 (40) | 55 (55) | -1 |
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: | 16 (14) | 68 (69) | +3 |
| | | |
DEMOCRATIC PARTY: | 41 (42) | 54 (53) | -2 |
REPUBLICAN PARTY: | 26 (25) | 64 (65) | +2 |
Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.
The post-election fade for the Democrats, and a corresponding bump for Republicans, continues this week, with Barack Obama holding steady while all other Democrats shed a point or two. Meanwhile, the variety of Republican entities we poll all see somewhere between 1-3 points of improvement in their net favorabilities.
While our tracking poll still shows a fairly sizeable gap between Democrats and Republicans, in terms of their public esteem, it is worth noting that said gap has been shaved in half since mid-summer:
Before the teabagger summer went into full effect, the Democratic Party was at near parity, while the Republican brand name was absolutely circling the drain:
Democratic Favorability: -3 (45/48)
Republican Favorability: -57 (17/74)
D/R FAVORABILITY "GAP": 54 pts
Now, as we are in the final weeks of 2009, and looking ahead to 2010, there has been significant movement that has had the effect of tightening that gap palpably:
Democratic Favorability: -13 (41/54)
Republican Favorability: -38 (26/64)
D/R FAVORABILITY "GAP": 25 pts
A good part of this has been base driven. In August, the Republican base was slightly more likely to view their party unfavorably (23%) than was the Democratic base (20%). Today, Democrats are four times more likely to view their party negatively (24%) than are Republicans (6%).
There has also been Independent movement, however. The favorability rating of Democrats among Independent voters has shed seven points in that four-month span (42 to 35) while the GOP has seen their favorability rating with Independents go up eleven points, although in fairness increases in support are easier to attain when you are starting, essentially, at zero (from 5 to 16).
The shift in party favorabilities is not difficult to understand. The GOP wanted, from the start, obstruction of the Democratic agenda. They have gotten their wish. Why wouldn't they approve of their party right now? Democrats, on the other hand, expected a variety of things from attaining the presidency and sizeable majorities in Congress. One year in, they are largely left wanting. They are not necessarily blaming the president (Obama's favorabilities with Democrats are a more robust 86/8), but they are blaming the party.
We also see, in this weeks tracking poll, that while Democrats still lead on our variation of the generic ballot test (by four points), they trail for the first time with Independents. This is particularly notable, because the favorability rating for Democrats among Indies, while down quite a bit (35/61), is far stronger than that of the GOP among Indies, which is still pathetic even as it has improved markedly (16/73).
This would seem to prove the theory of PPP's Tom Jensen, who wrote last month that his analysis of some House polling in Arkansas showed that those who disfavored both political parties were tending to vote Republican, perhaps out of a sense that at least things would be different (if not necessarily better) with the out-party in power. This is quite the cautionary tale for Democrats, whose lead in the generic ballot test across several pollsters has taken a beating in the last several weeks.