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Democracy Corps (D): Obama 41/55.

What today's Democracy Corps poll DOESN'T say.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  September 22nd, 2011 at 08:29 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The Greenberg/Carville-sponsored poll certainly does have a good deal to say about the current state of House races, albeit from as positive-towards-the-Democrats position (Hotline called it ‘sugary spin‘) as possible.  For example, for all of the talk about how ‘cool’ the electorate was towards Republican incumbents the truth is that they’re averaging a 40/32 approval/disapproval rating, and that the generic Congressional vote went from 48/42 Republican/Democrat in 2010 to 50/41 R/D today (which is up from 46/44 R/D in March).  And while the poll will happily tell you that Greenberg & Carville’s recommended message will shift that advantage down to an even-steven 45/45 R/D generic Congressional number, what they don’t mention is that the last time they polled this survey they were able to ‘turn’ a 46/44 R/D into 44/47 R/D.  In other words: things have gotten subtly worse for the Democrats since March.

As Hotline said: sugary spin.

But the big numbers here are President Obama’s: he went from a 48/47 approval/disapproval rating in the surveyed districts to a 41/55 today.  That… is a disaster; but not as much as one as the fact that both Perry and Romney beat Obama 49/45 and 49/43, respectively.  Couple that with the aforementioned incumbent approval ratings, and… well.  It is an article of faith among the Democrats that their problems with the electorate are solely due to their poor messaging; if nothing else, this election cycle should test that theory to destruction.

As for what the poll did not say: well, pretty much that at this rate having Obama show up to campaign for you will be seen as a punishment by this time next year.  Which you probably knew already, if you watched this Freedomworks video done by RedState’s own Ben Howe:

…and no, that isn’t an attempt to change the subject.  The above poll is the attempt to change the subject – or, more accurately, the attempt to change the subjects of the populace’s ire from Obama to the Republican House members who were elected to stop Obama from doing in 2011 and 2012 what Obama so incompetently did in 2009 and 2010.  Which they have done.  The Democrats absolutely hate the fact that Republicans were elected on a platform of saying “No,” particularly since “No” was the right answer – and, again, the Democratic pundit class believes in framing the way that a priest is supposed to believe in God.  So if ‘framing’ tells the Democrats that they need to jettison the President (bizarre as that would sound to anyone from 2008 who was reading this) in order to try to get the House back – well, that’s what they’ll try to do.

Don’t let them.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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COMMENTS

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  • earlgrey

    Stephanapolus where Carville was expressing cofidence that Obama’s recent deficit reduction plan would ‘turn the tide” of public opinion. I didnt’ understand that.

    Is it possible that a lot of pollsters and pundits are not undrerstanding what is going on in the American electorate? Or is Carville right that Obama will be able to turn things around with his heigtened rhetoric?

  • davesinsanantonio

    Carville is bright enough to understand the need to apply the rhetoric even though reality says his guy is losing big time. It is too bad a guy with that many brains insists on misusing them. Their religious faith in their political dogma takes precedence over facts for them. Their “bible” is Alinsky’s screed, and they will cling to it forever. They will still be saying the same things in ’13 when we have all the elected positions and Obummer is back in Chicago doing his community agitator gig. They can’t admit the truth publicly, or even to themselves, lest they have to do penance or risk excommunication from their “inquisition”-like priesthood in the lapdog media. They would rather drink the Kool-Aid than admit they might be wrong.

  • popster

    this president and all his Humpty Dumpty fixers are are caught in ‘I don’t know’ land, and every time they try to fix something they break it further. They just keep on reinforcing Einstein’s comment on insanity.

  • bk

    is how distant from Obama the House Ds and 20 or so Senate Ds are. I’m guessing that – as we’ve seen in recent special elections – the only person mentioning Obama will be the R. Obama will be able to play a lot of golf next year if no D wants him to appear in his district.

  • arthurmanger17

    The polls say, the polls show, the polls are a gimmick which was expanded and used to protect President Clinton during the Paula Jones scandal. Back then at least five states were never entered to poll it’s citizens because they were deemed to conservative. None were deemed to liberal. A national poll and that’s a joke, polls 1000 to 1600 people. From where? New York, Illinois and California. Has with all polls it’s how you frame the question or what you done allow as an option in the possible answer. This technique becomes even more critical when doing in State polls. The American people have wised up. They understand that these so called scientific polls are akin to the science of man made global warming. But that won’t stop the left from pushing the fiction.

  • hairbaggs

    The only poll that was worthy of mention was the one that accompanied my morning awakening. That like all political poles are quickly diffused by the dawn of reality..

  • ihateliberals

    that the samples have grown very small. In years past the samples were between 5 to 10 thousand people across the country now they are using 1 to 2 thousand people and they are still claiming the polls are unbiased. To me that is just not enough people our of a possible 100+ million voters. this might be why the polls show certain front runners and then the straw polls they have no control over show something different is happening. The sampling size is definitely a possible way to make them say what you want them to. James (lizard face) Carvlle is a perfect example of one of the 70′s tobacco company lawyers denying smoking causes cancer.

  • floridaveteran

    From Raosoft, Inc. makes high quality web survey software
    http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html
    Sample size calculator.

    What margin of error can you accept? 3.5%

    5% is a common choice

    The margin of error is the amount of error that you can tolerate. If 90% of respondents answer yes, while 10% answer no, you may be able to tolerate a larger amount of error than if the respondents are split 50-50 or 45-55.

    Lower margin of error requires a larger sample size.

    What confidence level do you need? 99%

    Typical choices are 90%, 95%, or 99%

    The confidence level is the amount of uncertainty you can tolerate. Suppose that you have 20 yes-no questions in your survey. With a confidence level of 95%, you would expect that for one of the questions (1 in 20), the percentage of people who answer yes would be more than the margin of error away from the true answer. The true answer is the percentage you would get if you exhaustively interviewed everyone.

    Higher confidence level requires a larger sample size.

    What is the population size? 100,000,000

    How many people are there to choose your random sample from? The sample size doesn’t change much for populations larger than 20,000.

    What is the response distribution? 50%
    Leave this as 50%

    For each question, what do you expect the results will be? If the sample is skewed highly one way or the other,the population probably is, too. If you don’t know, use 50%, which gives the largest sample size. See below under More information if this is confusing.

    Your recommended sample size is: 1355

    This is the minimum recommended size of your survey. If you create a sample of this many people and get responses from everyone, you’re more likely to get a correct answer than you would from a large sample where only a small percentage of the sample responds to your survey.