Some new data suggests Americans hold a negative opinion about the state of the country and are optimistic as well. How can this be? At least two explanations are possible and there's data for each:
1. People are unhappy about how things are going now but hopeful about the future.
and/or
2. The country is split. Some optimists, some pessimists.
The latter split, according to one report, is not along party lines but a split between populists and the "ruling class." Details ahead.
On March 17, NPR published a poll under the innocuous headline "More Voters Think U.S. Is On Right Track." That poll had a rather surprising result on the question of generic Congressional ballot preference, with Democrats and Republicans tied at 42, and 15% undecided. Whoa. Is that true?
Well if you check the pollster trendlines, this seems entirely plausible:
I just want to do a brief review here of some of the recent signs pointing to an ever-more-likely landslide victory scenario this November, with special emphasis on the House.
I'm combining information from three sources: Rasmussen, Democracy Corps and Cook Political Report.
First, there's the latest information on Partisan ID from Rasmussen, based on their daily tracking polls. Here's the chart I generated from their data. It shows how Democratic Party identification jumped sharply from the beginning of the primary season, after falling into the doldrums during 2007, when the Democratic Congress basically failed to deliver much of anything. It's remained fairly steady the last few months, but at record high levels:
A bit explanation and the table the chart is based on can be found on the flip, along the goods from Democracy Corps and Cook Political Report.
Cross posted on from DailyKos with a different poll
Rasmussen recently published results of their first (as far as I know) poll involving more than the two major party candidates. While I am glad to see some reality based polling going on (there will be 5 or 6 candidates on most of the ballot for Pres in most states in November), Rasmussen has some pretty serious flaws in methodology (shocking, I know).
Obama earns 42% of the vote, McCain 38%, Bob Barr 6% and Ralph Nader 4%. Given those options, 11% were undecided.Barr and Nader were mentioned as candidates of the Libertarian Party and the Green Party respectively.
By comparison, Sunday's 2-way numbers were Obama 45 McCain 44 - clearly this is good news for Obama, even if the real pull the lever November support of these two candidates is only half what is shown here. Details on the poll numbers, as well as analysis of both the results and Rasmussen's flawed methodology after the jump.
First the Republicans began losing voters, then, only quite recently the Democrats began gaining them. Although the magnitude is less than that shown in a recent Pew Poll, the broad storyline is the same. Indeed, within the last month, the Rasmussen figures have suddenly jumped into the same range that Pew gave:
