One fairly common narrative in left-wing media is that Democrats will suffer in mid-term elections unless they excite "the base." "The base," we are told, is so disappointed in President Obama and the Democratic Congress, that it will stay home, thus resulting in widespread Democratic losses in 2010.
That narrative is difficult to reconcile with the fact that people who are registered to vote, but who are considered unlikely to vote in 2010, overwhelmingly approve of President Obama's job performance (PDF):
Democracy Corps, February 20-24, 2010
1,001 2008 Voters; 851 Likely 2010 Voters; 150 Drop-Off Voters
Q.11 Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president?
|
Likely Voters |
Registered Unlikely Voters |
| Approve |
47% |
59% |
| Disapprove |
48% |
35% |
Despite the small sample size, this is not an isolated finding. Previous Democracy Corps polls in November (Approve 61%--32% Disapporve) and January (61%--33%) have also found President Obama with a sky-high job approval rating among people who are registered to vote but who are considered unlikely to vote in 2010.
How can "the base" be so disappointed in President Obama that they are deciding not to vote, when registered voters who are considered unlikely to vote overwhelmingly approve of President Obama's job performance?
The argument that "the base" is not going to turn out because they are disappointed in Obama does not hold up to available empirical evidence. And Democracy Corps is, to the best of my knowledge, the only polling organization that is tracking President Obama's job approval rating among people who are registered to vote but considered unlikely to vote in 2010. Other organizations have asked tangential questions, but not the basic questions, such as job performance. That's too bad--every polling organization that publishes likely voter results should publish crosstabs on unlikely voters, not to mention asking the unlikely voters open-ended questions about why they are unlikely to vote.
A better explanation is that the Democratic base is relatively youthful, and younger people don't turn out for midterm elections. Both of these are empirical observations, not conjecture. Until there is better and more frequent polling about what unlikely voters think, it remains the most demonstrable hypothesis on the market today.
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