With the traditional Labor Day launch of the general election campaign now past, national political news is being dominated by predictions of large Republican gains. This mood is being fed by two major new congressional generic ballot surveys utilizing likely voter screens. A NBC-Wall Street Journal poll gives Republicans a 49-40 advantage among likely voters (registered voters are tied at 43 percent), while an ABC-Washington Post survey shows a 53-40 GOP preference among likely voters (Republicans lead among registered voters 47-45). This makes last week’s much-debated Gallup poll showing a ten-point GOP lead (among registered voters, actually) look like less of an outlier.
Unsurprisingly, such numbers are also increasing sentiment that Republicans are in a good position to take control of the House. At a panel during this weekend’s American Political Science Association annual meeting, five prominent political scientists predicted major GOP gains in the House, with three (Emory’s Alan Abramowitz, Dartmouth’s Joe Bafumi and SUNY Buffalo’s James Campbell) projecting a Republican takeover.
More specifically, Politico published an annotated list today of 75 Democratic House districts that are being targeted by the GOP, ranked in three tiers: “must-win” seats, “majority-makers,” and “landslide” districts that could be won if a Republican wave is really high. There are also 13 districts considered “on the bubble” for being winnable by the GOP. The “must-win” contests are largely focused on open seats and those represented by freshman and sophomore Democrats in Republican-leaning districts, but the second and especially third tiers include a lot of relatively senior Democrats who’ve survived tough competition before.
The “majority-makers” list of targets, for example, includes Jim Marshall of GA, Baron Hill of IN, Leonard Boswell of IA, John Spratt of SC and Chet Edwards of TX; while the “landslide” list includes Gabby Giffords of AZ, John Salazar of CO, Ike Skelton of MO, Lincoln Davis of TN, Rick Boucher of VA and Rick Larsen of WA.
Aside from the prediction game, a lot of the talk about the midterms continues to focus on an “enthusiasm gap” between Democrats and Republicans. This “gap” is often used interchangeably with measurements of likelihood to vote, obscuring the rather important fact that various demographic categories of voters always show a differential likelihood to vote in midterms, with particularly unfortunate consequences for Democrats in 2010.
Most importantly, likelihood to vote in midterms is strongly correlated with age, while support for President Obama is inversely correlated with age (among white voters, at least). A new Gallup study indicates that young voters are relapsing to their traditional levels of political disengagement in midterms:
The gap between young adults (aged 18 to 29) and older adults (aged 30+) in their election attention levels was relatively narrow in 2008 — 12 percentage points — but the 23-point difference today (42 percent vs. 19 percent) is similar to the average 26-point gap seen in October-November of prior midterms, from 1994 through 2006.
So a lot of the “enthusiasm gap” is sort of baked into the cake, and is not necessarily attributable to anything that’s happened since November of 2008. That’s cold comfort for Democratic House members in trouble this year, but should point to a much better landscape in 2012.
With the winding-down of the primary season, polling of individual states has wound down a bit, too. Democrats were alarmed by a set of new Ohio polls from the Columbus Dispatch showing Republican Senate candidate Rob Portman and gubernatorial candidate John Kasich opening up double digit leads over Democrats Lee Fisher and Ted Strickland. A Magellan poll of New Hampshire Republicans shows long-time front-runner in the Senate race, Kelly Ayotte, holding an uncomfortable lead over a large field, with “true conservative” Ovide Lamontagne not far behind. The primary in that state is next Tuesday.
