Last week, upon the release of the weekly Daily Kos Tracking Poll, I noted a new feature of the survey, which painted a fairly distressing picture of the 2010 electorate:
a bigger indicator of peril comes from a new survey question added the DK tracking poll for the first time this week. The poll now includes a rather simple indicator of baseline voter enthusiasm for the year 2010. The question offered to respondents is a simple question about their intentions for 2010:
QUESTION: In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote?
The results were, to put it mildly, shocking:
Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + Not Voting
Republican Voters: 81/14
Independent Voters: 65/23
DEMOCRATIC VOTERS: 56/40
Two in five Democratic voters either consider themselves unlikely to vote at this point in time, or have already made the firm decision to remove themselves from the 2010 electorate pool. Indeed, Democrats were three times more likely to say that they will "definitely not vote" in 2010 than are Republicans.
If one pries open the hood on those numbers and digs a little bit deeper, the demographic details of who will comprise the likely 2010 electorate are even more distressing. Demographically, here are the top three groups in support of electing Democrats to the Congress in 2010:
2010 Generic Ballot Support, By Demographic Groups
Black Voters: Democrats +64
Voters Age 18-29: Democrats +49
Voters in the Northeastern US: Democrats +46
Now look at their proclivity for voting, according to their responses to the voting likelihood question in our survey:
Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + Not Voting
Black Voters: 34/54
Voters Age 18-29: 41/49
Voters in the Northeastern US: 49/43
Contrast that with the three leading demographic groups planning to vote for GOP candidates in 2010 (note that while the GOP led by ten among white voters, I excluded them from this trio because of their large proportion of the population):
2010 Generic Ballot Support, By Demographic Groups
Voters in the Southern US: Republicans +30
Voters Age 30-44: Republicans +21
Voters Age 60+: Republicans +6
Now, take a look at their likelihood of voting in the 2010 midterm election cycle:
Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + Not Voting
Voters in the Southern US: 66/28
Voters Age 30-44: 65/31
Voters Age 60+: 69/26
Their base is energized, while our base has, at best, languishing enthusiasm. Unless something fundamentally alters the calculus, that is a recipe for a wave election in 2010.
Midterms are, more often than not, base driven. In the successful (for Democrats) 2006 Midterm election, exit poll data showed an unnaturally small 12-point gap between liberals and conservatives (32-20). In the 1994 tsunami election during the Clinton era, that gap was twenty points (38-18).
In Virginia earlier this month, the gap between Conservatives and Liberals was twenty two points (40-18). One year ago, when the state gave its thirteen electoral votes to Barack Obama, the gap between Conservatives and Liberals was twelve points (33-21).
Democrats eager to avoid a repeat of 1994 might do well to look at the difference in base intensity right now, and do something to redress that enormous gap. There is little to no chance that the GOP base will grow deflated in the next eleven months--they very clearly have something to fight for (or more accurately, to fight against). The same cannot, as yet, be said for the Democrats. And there is enormous peril in that fact for the Democratic majority.