THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM ON THE 2006 midterm elections is that Republicans will take a bath. Because of the Abramoff scandal, an unpopular president, and low morale, Republicans have the political stars aligned perfectly against them–or so it seems. The polls often cited as pointing toward a massive Republican defeat, however, are not quite conclusive. True, they are hardly encouraging to Republicans. But polls are tricky things, often more problematic than predictive. As such, they’re worth a closer look.
A hardy perennial of pollsters is whether the public is satisfied that the country is on the right track or is dissatisfied and thinks we’re on the wrong track. This is supposed to measure the general feeling of well-being in the country, especially economic satisfaction. The Gallup poll in January found that 61 percent of Americans felt the country was headed in the wrong direction, and only 36 percent thought it was on the right track.
For what it’s worth, this poll result is bad news for Republicans, the incumbent party that holds the White House and Congress. But it’s not a fair measure of the optimism or pessimism of Americans. A negative finding was once regarded as proof incumbents were in trouble. On Election Day in 2004, Gallup found that 52 percent were dissatisfied, 46 percent satisfied. Yet President Bush was reelected and Republicans picked up seats in the Senate and the House.
What’s happened to the right track/wrong track question that makes it less useful? For one thing, it measures all sorts of dissatisfaction. Many conservatives fear America’s moral climate is worsening. Thus they think the country is moving in the wrong direction. For their part, Democrats have made the poll result partisan. They seize on the wrong direction number simply because they loathe President Bush and Republicans. No doubt Republicans will do the same if Senator Hillary Clinton is elected president.
One theory of midterm elections is predicated on the presidential job approval number. If the economy is strong and the approval number is roughly 50 percent or better, the incumbent party should avert serious losses. In the latest Fox News poll, Bush’s approval rating is 44 percent. But that’s among registered voters and it’s likely voters that really matter. The Rasmussen poll uses likely voters and it has the president at 47 percent, still low but closer to the magic 50 percent.
In 2004, Bush was also at 47 percent and became the first president since FDR to win reelection while his party also picked up House and Senate seats. The point here is that the minimum-50-percent-presidential-approval rule is not ironclad. A party can win with less.
A third poll–one particularly relevant to midterm elections–gauges party preference. The new Fox poll found that 42 percent believe “it would be better for the country” if Democrats wrested control of Congress from Republicans. Thirty-four percent preferred Republicans to maintain control.
This poll result, too, should not be taken too seriously, at least this far ahead of the November election. In 1994, Republicans trailed in party preference for most of the year, then wound up capturing 52 House seats. It wasn’t until the final weeks of the campaign that they surged ahead in preference. It turned out Republicans were far more energized and likely to vote on Election Day than Democrats.
That leads to the important matter of voter intensity. At the moment, Democrats appear to be far more passionate than Republicans. “Show me an issue where Republicans have passion,” says pollster Frank Luntz. The only one, he suggests, is immigration, and Republicans are divided on it. “Who can’t wait to vote?” he asks. It’s Democrats.
“No matter what number you use, it shows Republicans are in real trouble,” Luntz says. The latest Pew poll, for instance, asked respondents if their congressional vote would be a vote “against” Bush. In February 2002, only 9 percent said they would be voting against the president, and 34 said they’d be voting for him. In February 2006, 31 percent said they intended to vote against Bush in the midterm election, 18 percent for him.
Bush, of course, won’t be on the ballot in November, but Republicans will. So this is bad news for them. Worse, this poll result may be a measure of voter intensity, with Democrats considerably more eager to vote than Republicans, if only to register their opposition to Bush by voting against his party.
Luntz looks at six indicators that may affect Republicans in the midterm election: voters’ desire for change, fear, anxiety, anger, sense of betrayal, and the presence of an alternative. On the first five, Republicans are faring poorly, he says. But on the sixth, Democrats have yet to emerge as a credible alternative to voters who otherwise might vote Republican.
Despite the current troubles, Luntz goes on, Republicans could recover. Bush must perform well enough to lift his approval number close to 50 percent. And he must persuade the public that the economy truly is in solid shape. Perception of a strong economy, not just the reality, is important.
Perhaps Republicans will weather the sixth year of the Bush presidency and avoid disaster in November. Bad polls, after all, are merely polls. And in politics, poll numbers are not static. Bush’s approval rating in the Fox poll was 36 percent three months ago and has climbed 8 percentage points since. So there’s only one sensible way to look at polls–skeptically.
Fred Barnes is the executive editor of The Weekly Standard and the author of Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush (Crown Forum).
