The quartet of "bad news for Republicans" polls out yesterday have some real meat in them, and I urge everyone to read the details. They can be found here:
NYT/CBS (.pdf),
ABC/WaPo,
USA/Gallup and
CNN. They all agree Hastert and House leadership handled the Foley mess badly (75%, CNN), a bare majority of Americans (in some cases just a plurality) want Hastert to resign, but it won't make a difference if he does, and somewhere from 20-30% of the voting public are less inclined to vote for the GOP. With a divided electorate, those are impressive numbers.
Gallup breaks it down further, with some helpful analysis;
It has become known that at least some members of the House were aware of Foley's sexually charged communication with pages for several years. Critics have alleged Republican leaders tried to cover up the incident to avoid a scandal while Republicans try to hold onto their congressional majority. Those more sympathetic to the Republicans have countered that the explicit nature of Foley's communications with pages was not made known until very recently, at which point Foley promptly resigned his position.
As is often the case when scandalous news bursts onto the scene in high-intensity campaigns, some observers are quick to conclude that it will have a major effect on voters. The real impact, however, is often not clear until days, or in some instances, weeks later.
The latest USA Today/Gallup poll was conducted Oct. 6-8, more than a week after the news became a front page story. The poll included basic tracking measures of attitudes toward the Republicans, President Bush, and voting intentions, as well as specific questions focused on the Foley situation itself.
The data suggest that the events have had a substantial impact on voting intentions, with the Democrats moving to a very significant 59% to 36% lead when voters are asked for which candidate they will vote in the Nov. 7 election. (This generic ballot will be analyzed in detail on Wednesday on galluppoll.com). President Bush's job approval rating (see Related Item) has dropped slightly from his mid-September high point, although the current 37% rating is in line with previous job approval ratings for the president over the last several months. Overall approval of the job being done by Congress is down to 24%.
One reason the scandal has yet to crest is that in drips and drabs, more information continues to come out. Whereas conservative evangelicals are more inclined to blame Foley but not the GOP according to interviews in the NYT (VA) and on NBC (TN), that won't be so if opinion continues to grow that the leadership mishandled this (and they're
doing nothing to help themselves). And whereas they are not going to vote for Dems,
it remains to be seen in what numbers they show up for Rs (previous polls show a considerable dropoff). A recent First Read comment:
But the Pew poll also "found that 57 percent of white evangelicals are inclined to vote for Republican congressional candidates in the midterm elections, a 21-point drop in support among this critical part of the GOP base."
The bottom line (Gallup):
The specific data collected here show that voters do believe that the Foley situation was kept quiet by Republican leaders for political reasons. The fact that the majority of voters say the situation is not affecting their vote is expected given the etched-in-stone voting tendencies of groups of both Republicans and Democrats at both ends of the voting spectrum. But the net impact of the Foley situation overall is still a negative 25%, based on that 34% say they will be less likely to vote GOP and 9% say they are more likely to vote GOP.
It's also possible that the Republican handling of the Foley situation has become a tipping point of sorts -- not terrible in and of itself -- but rather another indicator for some voters of a desire to shift the incumbent leadership of their Congress.
And that, my friends, is due to Iraq.
Update [2006-10-10 8:44:8 by DemFromCT]:Love this headline:
Foley scandal has Republican politicians running for cover-up