Senior Republican strategists want their candidates to get the message loud and clear: To survive the midterm elections, run against House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
To get their point across, the super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Congressional Leadership Fund, commissioned a post-special election poll in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, barely won by Republican Troy Balderson. The survey showed Pelosi to have a 61 percent unfavorable rating, a sentiment CLF pollster Gene Ulm said is consistent across the suburban districts that could tip the House to the Democrats.
“Some in the media have attempted to say that Nancy Pelosi is not a useful lighting rod for GOP campaigns to tie their opponent to, but the survey data will show how divisive Pelosi can be,” Ulm wrote in a polling memo for CLF that was shared with the Washington Examiner.
[Opinion: Survey: Democrats are fed up with Nancy Pelosi]
Balderson, in an Aug. 7 special election, defeated Democrat Danny O’Conner 49 percent to 48 percent in a historically Republican district in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. Though the Republicans won, the results augur well for Democrats in November. President Trump won the district in 2016 by more than 11 points, and no Democrat has come to winning there in several years.
House Republicans are facing similar challenges in suburban districts across the country — many in seats that Trump won only narrowly or lost to Democrat Hillary Clinton. But Ulm insisted that the post election polling he conducted in Ohio’s 12th reveals a path to victory for vulnerable Republicans that he said will come to define the House GOP’s midterm message.
“Democratic candidates are going to be bludgeoned with Nancy Pelosi and everything she says and does,” Ulm said in an interview.
Ulm’s firm, NMB research, was in the field Aug. 13-15 and polled 400 likely voters. The survey’s margin of error was 4.9 percentage points.
That’s a tad high for definitively reliable data. But it’s consistent with other polling that has shown Pelosi unpopular. Indeed, many Democratic candidates are pledging they would not support Pelosi for speaker if their party wins control of the House on Nov. 6. Some political observers believe O’Connor might have won had he not said during the campaign that he could vote for Pelosi for House speaker.
Ulm rejected Democratic counter-arguments that Trump would be a bigger drag on Republicans than Pelosi is on the Democrats. His post-election survey in Ohio’s 12 District showed the president with a 50 percent favorable rating, while specifically among Balderson voters, Pelosi clocked in a 94 percent personally unfavorable.
Among the survey’s other findings:
- Danny O’Connor’s support of Nancy Pelosi cross-pressured large numbers of his own coalition; only six-in-ten (61 percent) of O’Connor’s voters had a favorable opinion of Pelosi.
- Decisive Independent voters were negative toward Pelosi by a three-to-one margin (22 percent favorable – 66 percent unfavorable.)
- Forty-six percent of the special election voters believe the country is headed in the right direction.
- Fifty-three percent of the voters either approve of President Trump unconditionally or approve of his policies.
- Sixty-two percent of the voters reported that their vote was either in support of President Trump or he was not a factor in their vote.
- Nineteen percent of the voters said they support Donald Trump’s policies but dislike his leadership style. The ballot was decisively in Balderson’s favor with these voters 85 percent – 12 percent.
