Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 1/11/2010-1/14/2010. All adults. MoE 2% (Last weeks results in parentheses):
| FAVORABLE | UNFAVORABLE | NET CHANGE |
|---|
| PRESIDENT OBAMA | 55 (56) | 42 (41) | -2 |
| | | |
| PELOSI: | 42 (42) | 49 (48) | -1 |
| REID: | 29 (33) | 61 (56) | -9 |
| McCONNELL: | 20 (18) | 62 (63) | +3 |
| BOEHNER: | 20 (19) | 61 (61) | +1 |
| | | |
| CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: | 39 (41) | 56 (55) | -3 |
| CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: | 19 (18) | 63 (65) | +3 |
| | | | |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY: | 41 (42) | 55 (53) | -3 |
| REPUBLICAN PARTY: | 32 (30) | 59 (60) | +3 |
Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.
A rough, rough week in the Daily Kos State of the Nation tracking poll for the Democrats. Drops across the board, ranging from an incremental slide of a single point for Speaker Pelosi to a cratering drop of nine points in net favorability for Senator Harry Reid. Republicans, meanwhile, continue gains that have been in evidence for quite some time, owing largely to a resurgence in base loyalty but also evident with Independent voters, as well.
Quite obviously, the sharp descent for Majority Leader Reid can be owed the "Game Change" revelations over last weekend, which brought to our collective attention the awkward phrase now burned into the minds of most in the political conversation: "negro dialect".
The question is whether that incident dragged down the party as a whole. While Reid was a big story, and the differences between Dem and GOP support in this tracker are sharp, the evidence is, at best, mixed.
For one thing, the decline in favorability varies with each entity. Harry Reid's sharpest drop was with independent voters, where he took a sharp twelve-point dive in his net favorabilities. With President Obama (and the Democratic Party at large) the drop was most pronounced among Democrats, which suggests some base erosion that could be owed to a variety of other items, including the protracted congressional negotiations on health care.
A final note on Reid, and an intriguing one at that: his dip in net favorability was actually sharper among white voters (net loss of 9) than it was among African-American voters (net loss of 8).
As for implications for 2010, the continued narrowing of the gap between the public perception of Republicans and Democrats is beginning to extract very real costs in terms of voter support.
Five months ago, before the August Congressional recess, Democrats enjoyed a lead of eight points in our variation on the generic Congressional ballot test (37-29). This included an eight point lead among Independent voters.
During that same poll, the Democratic Party had a net favorability of negative 5 points (44/49). While that might seem like nothing to write home about, it was a full 50 points better than the GOP, who was limping with a net favorability of negative 55 points (18/73).
Today? That gap in net favorabilities has slid from fifty points down to a mere thirteen points. The Dems have lost ground, to be sure (41/55), but it is also very noteworthy that the GOP has rebounded, and significantly (32/59).
While the GOP resurgence has been largely base driven (favorability among Republicans has leapt from a 63/22 spread in August to 88/4 now), there has also been a seismic shift among Independents. Not surprisingly, Independents do not particularly love either party. But the GOP has managed to dig out from the cellar. What was once an almost unthinkable favorability spread of 6/83 has risen this week to 22/65. More importantly, the Democratic Party's favorabilities among Indies have slid palpably in that time, from a modest 41/48 to a painful 35/64.
This has had a real effect on the generic ballot test for 2010, as well:
QUESTION: Would you like to see more Democrats or Republicans elected to Congress in 2010?
Democrats: 38
Republicans: 37
Not Sure: 25
The Democratic lead is now a single point, the lowest it has been since DK began asking this particular question on the tracker back in May of 2009. More importantly, perhaps, Independents have reversed their verdict. Whereas Democrats once held an eight-point lead back in August, Independents now prefer Republicans to Democrats by a nine-point margin (29-20).
The good news? There are still a lot persuadable Independents out there, as a majority of them remain unsure about their 2010 preferences. The bad news? That appears to be the only good news in this week's edition of the Tracking Poll.
