Posted on 11/09/2015 1:43:25 PM PST by Kaslin
As a follow-up to my earlier post on the age problem facing the Democratic Party, a new poll from a Democratic pollster shows that the risk for the Left is actually much larger than The Hill assumes. The poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner shows a significant opportunity for Democrats to narrowly take control of the Senate in 2016, but that millennials are barely engaged in the election. Nor are other Democratic constituencies generating anywhere near the heat of Republicans, gearing up for some of their own hope and change after eight years of Obama.
Here’s the key graph from the poll. “RAE” stands for “rising American electorate,” better known as the Barack Obama coalition — and perhaps better described as such, too. Non-RAE respondents have a 14-point edge in enthusiasm for 2016, 71/57, and Republicans a five point edge over Democrats and 12 points over independents.
The GQR poll of the Senate battlegrounds is rather murky at best, although Greenberg makes the sunniest assumptions there. The MOE is ±4.9%, and three of the four races fall within it. The overall battleground poll for the Senate only has Democrats up by three, hardly a compelling lead this far out — and with the above enthusiasm numbers.
Greg Sargent writes that this should be a warning alarm to Democrats:
Unmarried women, minorities, and particularly millennials are less interested in next year's voting than seniors, conservatives, and white non-college men are. Non-college women — a group the Clinton camp is reportedly eyeing as a way to expand on the Obama coalition are also less interested.
"Unmarried women are a key dynamic in American politics," Page Gardner, the president of Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund, tells me. "It's clear that the party or candidate who can increase turnout of unmarried women and the other segments of the Rising American Electorate will be well-positioned for victory in 2016."
Now, obviously there is a very long way to go, and plenty of time for these voter groups to get more engaged. If Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, and the prospect of electing the first female president seems increasingly within reach, you could see engagement kicking in much more substantially. (It will be interesting to see how non-college, unmarried, minority and millennial women respond.)
But Greenberg's pollsters are sounding the alarm now, warning that Democrats need to take more steps to tailor their message towards boosting the interest level among these voters. As Stan Greenberg outlines in his new book, America Ascendant, the key to engaging these voters is two-fold. It isn't enough to simply outline bold economic policies to deal with college affordability, child care (universal pre-K), workplace flexibility (paid family and sick leave), and so forth, though those things are crucial. What's also required to engage these groups, Greenberg argues, is a reform agenda geared to reducing the influence of the wealthy, the lobbyists, and the special interests over our politics.
This may be a bigger red flag than even Sargent sees. For most of 2015, the media has focused on the 2016 primaries in both parties. There is clearly media-consumer interest, and on the Democratic side, a front-runner who is already well known to their voters. The lack of interest at this stage looks a lot less like the normal cycle of late engagement than a chronic lack of enthusiasm for the same old choices.
Put it another way: Hillary Clinton has been around Washington DC for 23 years and counting. Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership team has been around for longer than that. How does one sell Hillary and Pelosi as the vanguard of reform? Barack Obama could make that claim in 2007/8 because of his relative detachment from Washington DC, plus his youth and background. Without that kind of candidate, Democrats become the party of the status quo — and that’s not going to sell among RAEs, as Sargent and Greenberg surmise.
Republicans, however, have options to make themselves the reform option and to engage at least some of the so-called RAE demos. A younger candidate, or an outsider candidate, might help; running against the stagnation of the last seven years by proposing structural regulatory and tax reforms could also help, but might be more wonky than effective. What Republicans have to do is actively engage these voters, not with 30,000-foot messaging about philosophy and ideology but by getting on the ground and getting to know them. Only then can they sell a conservative agenda not just as a means in itself, but as a practical solution for the problems voters face in their own lives.
That’s exactly what my upcoming book, Going Red (Crown Forum), will discuss. It comes out in April 2016. I’ll have more on it in the next few weeks.
This explains why the MSM is so keen to whip up race & gender hatred these days.
Family pressures have to be effecting things. My 88 year old dad is cowering over his Union Dem stance. His “Where did I go wrong?” BS is turning into apology.
Oh wait until Oprah makes her endorsement of Hillary. The Liberals will flock to the voting booths. The only way this changes is if we get a great candidate who attracts the Independents who will go away from the Liberals.
Is this “rising/falling” tripe kind of like electrons and holes in an electrical circuit? An up-is-down and down-is-up sort of thing?
No worries, the dems will enlist more voters from their graveyard constituency.
I really, really want to vote in a President who WILL enforce the laws and WILL stop the illegal alien inundation.
I don’t think I’m alone in that.
I really, really WON’T vote for any of The Cheap Labor Express candidates.
(even if Hillary thanks me)
Doesn’t matter, at least not in the Blue States.
After the polls close, the Democrat precinct captains will go down the list and vote for anybody who didn’t show up.
They’ll trot out a student loan forgiveness scheme and they’ll have Millenials crawling over broken glass to vote for it.
Nominate Jeb! or Rubio and watch the motivation tank.
Don’t forget the illegals
The dems’ early voter corps will show up at the polls again on Election Day and cover any deficiency. Cigarettes and KFC gift cards are worth Hillary’s weight in gold.
Motivation will fizzle easily, if on ballot Jeb, Carson , Rubio etc are named.
I am just curious, did you stay home in the 2008, or 2012 elections, because you didn't you didn't like either one of the republican nominees?
Does this mean you will stay home on the general election if either one is nominated? BTW who says Jeb will be nominated?
Likely a plurality will get too stinko at the pre-election shindig to make it to the polls.
I learned everything I need to know about voter motivation in 2012. Republicans were highly motivated to get rid of Obama. Even with the less than inspiring Mitt Romney as our guy I would say the GOP voters were way more motivated than the Democrats, but at the end of the day a hundred highly motivated republican voters are worth the same as 1 highly motivated and paid Democrat vote wrangler, who drives the van through the neighborhood on election day or even more likely these days, visits a hundred homes to help fill out and cast mail-in votes weeks before the election. The 2012 vote was lost weeks before election day. When someone else is pushing, paying, nudging, reminding, forcing you to vote, motivation is not the deciding factor.
I have thought this all along. Look at the SNL ratings when Hillary was on and when Donald Trump was on.
Well-said.
MAYBE.
If we run Jeb/Rubio, then it WILL NOT be our side that is motivated.
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