I ain't buying it. My ISP homepage offers headlines from the AP wire and about an hour ago this gem of classic AP bullshit popped up under the headline: AP-GfK Poll: Climate for GOP keeps getting better.
WTF. Didn't they watch TV last night? Don't they lurk on Daily Kos and know that with the end of the primary season, the tide has begun to turn for the Democrats? But, no, right there beside a picture of O'Donnell herself, there is this lede:
Tilted toward the GOP from the start of the year, the political environment has grown even more favorable for Republicans and rockier for President Barack Obama and his Democrats over the long primary season that just ended with a bang.
How could they possibly say that? They do it with helpful quotes from the likes of John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell whose happy face spin on last night's results include:
"We're definitely in a stronger position than we've been in really at any point this year," Sen. John Cornyn, who leads the effort to elect Senate Republicans, said in an interview.
Said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: "Turnout and enthusiasm are off the charts."
But what's this about a poll? Here is where the slight of mind hand comes in.
As Illinois kicked off the primary season Feb. 2, there was little talk even among Republicans that power in the House was in reach, much less in the Senate. But the national landscape has only has worsened for Democrats.
Back then:
The unemployment rate was 9.7 percent; it's 9.6 now.
Half of the country said in January that the country was on the wrong track; 57 percent say that now in the new AP-GfK poll.
About 42 percent of the country disapproved of Obama's job performance; half does now.
Democrats had a 49 percent to 37 percent advantage over Republicans on the party that voters want to see control Congress; the GOP now enjoys a 55-39 lead among likely voters.
Republicans have steadily gained ground on economic issues and now have a slight advantage on handling the economy, the federal deficit and taxes. They improved their standing in the past month even as Obama stepped up his efforts to persuade the public to give Democratic solutions more time to work.
At the same time, 40 percent of likely voters call themselves tea party supporters, and most of them lean toward Republicans while nearly two-thirds have a deeply negative impression of Democrats.
Geez, that sounds gawd awful, doesn't it? The Democrats have fallen, and they can't get up.
Except and unless you actually look at the pollby following the easily overlooked link on the bottom of the story. That illuminates the following things:
- The poll cited has nothing to do with the actual election results yesterday, in as much as it samples voters up through Monday and addresses no local issues. It only samples national approval/disapproval numbers for the two parties and the President and right track/wrong track numbers.
- The most recent sample looks a bit skewed toward R with
32% attending church once a week or more often
38% self identifying and born again/evangelical
36% living in a rural area
Oh yeah. That looks exactly like America to me. Of course, the other thing it means is that because of it's large population (Census Bureau puts MD and DE in the South) the bright red influences across broad swaths of the South skew most national samples away from the way the rest of the country leans.
Then there are the results obtained in the latest survey. Guess what? Most of the trends look pretty good for our guys. Both the President's and the Democrats' net favorables are improving and the right track/wrong track numbers are trending better. On nearly every separate issue tested, the President's net favorables improve ahead of his overall net favorables. In other words, the AP's own poll bears no meaningful relationship to the AP's reporting on Democratic fortunes. The AP report is just willfully wrong, as usual.
The actual truth is what the Postmansaid in times much harder than our own: "Stuff's getting better. Stuff's getting better every day."
Get involved in the OFA ground game. David Plouffe knows how to win this election but only can do it if provided the tools.