Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 1/18/2010-1/21/2010. All adults. MoE 2% (Last weeks results in parentheses):
| FAVORABLE | UNFAVORABLE | NET CHANGE |
---|
PRESIDENT OBAMA | 54 (55) | 44 (42) | -3 |
| | | |
PELOSI: | 40 (42) | 50 (49) | -3 |
REID: | 28 (29) | 62 (61) | -2 |
McCONNELL: | 22 (20) | 61 (62) | +3 |
BOEHNER: | 21 (20) | 60 (61) | +2 |
| | | |
CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: | 38 (39) | 58 (56) | -3 |
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: | 21 (19) | 62 (63) | +3 |
| | | |
DEMOCRATIC PARTY: | 39 (41) | 56 (55) | -3 |
REPUBLICAN PARTY: | 34 (32) | 58 (59) | +3 |
Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.
For the second consecutive week, the polling data is pretty uniform, and in a way that will not warm the hearts of Democrats. Every Democrat sheds an additional 2-3 points of net favorability. Meanwhile, every Republican gains an additional 2-3 points of net favorability.
When it comes to the parties at-large, tracking poll history takes place this week. For the first time since the Daily Kos/State of the Nation tracking poll began, the net favorabilities of the two parties lie within single digits of one another.
It is a dramatic turnaround, and one in which a picture certainly says a thousand words:
Another piece of tracking poll history: for the first time since the question was asked, voters prefer seeing more Republicans in the Congress after the 2010 elections than Democrats.
QUESTION: Would you like to see more Democrats or Republicans elected to Congress in 2010?
Republicans: 38
Democrats: 37
Not Sure: 25
A harrowing statistic: the first time DK polled this question about 2010 voting intentions was in our tracking poll released on May 21, 2009. At that time, Independents preferred Democrats to Republicans on this generic test by ten points (34-24). Today, it is Republicans that are on top with Independent voters, and it is by eleven points (32-21).
Also, in a rather disturbing movement in just a handful of weeks, 11% of Democrats would currently like to see more Republicans in Congress. During the first week of December, only 5% of Democrats felt that way.
The only positive statistic for Democrats this week is the Brown-Coakley affair might have awakened the Democratic vote ever so slightly. Last week, the spread between likely and and unlikely voters was at an all time low (51/46). Those numbers rebound a bit this week (54/43).
The bad news is that Republican interest in the 2010 elections is near an all-time high: 82% of Republicans are either certain to vote or likely to vote.
It would be easy to dismiss this as a "Brown bounce" and little more. And it goes without saying that the GOP had a wonderful media week (and the Dems, conversely, a brutal one) as a result of Tuesday's special election.
But the trend lines above make it clear that this is a political storm that has been long in the making. The Democratic brain trust would be well served to arrive at a solution to this electoral conundrum, and make haste in doing so. Their political future, quite clearly, depends on it.