Nate Silver, the left-leaning statistician recently hired by the New York Times after running his own polling blog for several years, is warning Democrats not to dismiss the GOP generic ballot lead as a mere outlier.
Gallup released a poll yesterday, using the president’s favorite word, “unprecedented,” to describe the GOP’s 10-point lead on the generic ballot question. It’s the first time the Republican Party has achieved such a margin in the 70 years Gallup has been polling the question, and puts them 10 points ahead of their standing on the eve of the ’94 wave election.
Silver had bad news for liberals looking to the Newsweek poll, which found the parties tied, for solace:
Still, even if the poll is an outlier, that doesn’t mean it should simply be dismissed. Instead, the question is: an outlier relative to what? If the Democrats’ true deficit on the generic ballot were 5 points, it would not be all that unusual to have a poll now and then that showed them trailing by 10 points instead, nor would it be so strange for a couple of polls to show the race about tied. Indeed, that seems to be about where the generic ballot sits now. No non-Internet survey has shown the Democrats with a lead larger than 1 point on the generic ballot for over a month now, whereas their worst results of late seem to put them in the range of 10 points to 11 points behind.
Democrats have been trying to lay the blame for this spectacular fall from grace solely at the feet of the economic situation, ignoring effects of the centerpiece of Obama’s first two years in office — health care reform. A Politico piece on Democratic fears of losing the House completely ignored health care reform in favor of storylines like the Ground Zero Mosque. But even the energetic Obamacare shills at HCAN feel it’s enough of a negative to urge candidates and activist not to even mention it.
Jay Cost offers an “It’s the Obamacare, stupid” argument:
It would be difficult for any strong partisan to admit that such an accomplishment was sodeeply unpopular. Yet the polling is pretty unequivocal on the relationship between the Democrats’ fortunes and the health care bill. It was during the health care debate that the essential building block of the Democratic majority – Independent voters – began to crumble. It was evident in the generic ballot. It was evident in the President’s job approval numbers. It was evident in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
Vulnerable Democrats seem to understand this better than the talking-points authors in Washington. North Virginian Rep. Gerry Connolly, head of the freshman House class of ’08, conceded today that health care is a problem:
It has already proven dangerous for Democrats to underestimate the displeasure with government’s processes and excesses (the very ones Obama was supposed to fix) created by the passage of Obamacare, especially among independent voters. The dismal economy will certainly be a large part of the losses they incur, but ignoring the new level of disgust Obamacare has wrought will only serve to bolster the GOP’s newfound edge.
The new normal is not merely an accident of the economy, and the election is not merely an anti-incumbent fervor that happens to be afflicting Democrats. They’re paying a price for their actions, not just their circumstances.
