Posted on 11/07/2006 2:24:00 AM PST by Oakleaf
Bump -- Welcome Rush Limbaugh listeners! Please see update below.
Pew Research has published its crosstabs for the poll that shows the Republicans tightening up the race, which I linked last night. The internals deliver even more bad news to the Democrats, as significant leads in several demographic categories have been cut drastically or wiped out entirely.
The last Pew Research poll was taken in early October. In a month, the Democrats have lost non-minorities altogether. The gap among all whites went from +5 Democrats to +5 GOP, a ten-point swing. White females had supported Democrats by a 15-point margin and a majority (55-40), but now give the GOP a 2-point lead. The Democrats have also lost the middle class, a big problem in this election.
Households earning between $50K-$75K and $30K-$50K have both slipped to the GOP. The former switched from a 14-point margin for the Democrats to an eight-point Republican lead, while the latter has had an even more dramatic shift. Those earners had favored Democrats by 22 points, but now go Republican by 3. The Democrats even lost the tie they had with earners above $75K, and now trail there by seven. They did extend their margin for earners below $30K from 25 points to 30.
In the religious demographics, where the Democrats have tried mightily to find some traction, they also have problems. They held a thin lead (5 points) among all Protestants, but now trail by 9. Their ten-point lead among white mainline Protestants has dissipated into a tie. They lead among all Catholic, having lost three points off of an eight-point lead, but non-Hispanic Catholics now favor the GOP by 5 points, a ten-point shift.
Even in areas where Democrats maintained their leads, they have cause for some nail-biting. They lost part of their margin among self-described moderates, going from a whopping 44 points to 27. They had led in all regions of the country a month ago, but now have lost the South altogether in a 16-point shift, and a 26-point gap in the Northeast has narrowed to nine points -- a remarkable comeback for Republicans in a liberal stronghold. The GOP also cut the Democratic lead among urban voters from 32 points to 10.
The theme of this poll is the attack on Democratic gains in this election cycle. The GOP has rolled back the Democratic intrusion onto Republican demographics, which leaves the field looking similar to 2004 and 2002. This race may hold some very unpleasant surprises for the Democrats in the House races if these numbers hold up or continue to erode over the next 40 hours.
UPDATE: I started getting e-mails from CQ readers telling me that Rush Limbaugh featured this blog post on the air today, and that Tony Snow had mentioned it during Rush's interview as well. Read the transcript here:
RUSH: Well, you look like you are, and that's infectious in its own way for audience people who watch you and have a chance to hear what you're saying. Let's talk about these polls tightening. SNOW: Yeah.
RUSH: I have been suspicious of polls for a long time in the sense that I believe news organizations use them to make news that reflects their editorial pages, and the same with the editorial opinion of broadcast network people, and like the Pew poll internals show massive shifts in 30 days of public opinion. One of the things in the Pew poll is that the Democrats have lost all white voters. They've lost women and they've lost --
SNOW: They've lost men. They've lost women. Absolutely right, and I'm glad you pointed that out. Captain Ed Morrissey was one of the guys -- I don't know if you saw that this morning, but he was going through them. There have been really big shifts going on, and I think it's kind of the natural by-product that people really taking a look at what Democrats are doing, which is literally running around and heckling the president rather than trying to think seriously about how to deal with Osama bin Laden or a global war on terror. They're certainly not saying anything constructive about the economy -- and when you come to an election, when the very big issue is Iraq and the other side really doesn't have anything to say about it.
I'm thrilled for the notice, and I certainly thank Tony Snow and Rush Limbaugh for picking up the story. I think this tells volumes about the creakiness of the Democratic "wave" tomorrow. Hugh Hewitt has more from Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman on the same subject. And Newsbeat1 has more from Rush on this post.
Posted by Captain Ed at 07:41 PM | Comments (28) | TrackBack (9)
The captain is a helluva writer if you ask me.
Great news -- wonder if they've heard it at DU. :-)
Hey- they're getting a little nervous over there :-)
Are they gonna lock up DU again to outsiders?
There has been a lot of talk on how the Main Stream Democrat Dinosaur Media is using phony polls and everything else they've got to influence the election for Democrats. I'm hoping that it is so obvious this year that the average person gets a clue though I'm not optimistic. At my local watering hole people think the war is already lost and we're in a recession.
Poor things, they never could take pressure. They'll have their doors and windows boarded up by noon. Huddled in a corner and listening for all kinds of strange noises. Convinced Karl Rove is outside, scratching on the door, trying to get in.
Someone neeeds to post this over there and complain that Rush is buying off the polsters. LOL
I didn't see any evidence of that - I guess it depends on the outcome :)
ping
Okay - gonna try and catch a few more z's before I really have to get up.
Magnificent, I'm going to meet you all at the polls early, in fact, I just get off work around 8am.
And here I thought I was the only one who did that.
Here is a link to a post by Skinner which outlines what they are going to do:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2599737&mesg_id=2599737
"people at my local watering hole think the war is already lost and we're in a recession."
"american press"-ministry of propaganda.
The ground-zero voter the Democrats have been selling themselves to is a femininized "person" in "her" 20's, who feels some sort of ties to the {hippy, mod, anti-war, sexual revolution, rockster, hedonist/nihilist} tradition.
The "trendy" self-image these people so narcissistically manage is now actually a long-in-the-tooth tradition in America is the tip of iceberg of their numerous self-contradictions.
Kurt Cobain is dead -- and he never was very fresh.
(A ping to this thread's set of reflections, to some of FR's reflectors that just come to mind.)
Funny that DU only lets you put 1 "I voted" avatar.
Ha, hadn't thought of that, but it sure is funny!
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