The Stats You Haven't Seen

Frankly, I've never bought into the stats that predict gloom for the GOP this fall. Too many polls showed Democrats with seemingly insurmountable leads. A good case in point is here in Minnesota, where various polls shows Amy Klobuchar with massive leads. The Minnesota Poll of a month ago said that Ms. Klobuchar was way ahead despite low name recognition numbers. Go figure. Here's the part I found less than credible:

DFL Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar has opened up a strong early lead over GOP rival Mark Kennedy in a Minnesota Poll that shows Klobuchar with 50 percent of likely voters' support, compared with 31 percent for Kennedy. Much can change between now and November. But in what had widely been considered a close race, Klobuchar in midsummer has more support than Kennedy in nearly every demographic category: men, women, liberals, independents, lower- and upper-income Minnesotans, seniors, urban dwellers, suburbanites and outstaters.

As I said then, the notion that Klobuchar led "in nearly every demographic category" simply wasn't credible. I cited then that Democrats haven't led Republicans amongst men in a generation. To suggest that Ms. Klobuchar led in that demographic was a hint that this poll is an outliar.

Thanks to the Washington Times' Donald Lambro, we now have a new set of numbers to ponder:

This year's primary results, where three congressional incumbents were dumped by the voters, "combined with Congress's abysmal job-approval ratings and extremely high 'wrong-track' numbers, indicate a very volatile, turbulent election year, the kind that incumbents hate for good reason," election forecaster Charlie Cook writes in the National Journal.

But an earlier poll of 1,047 Americans conducted for CNN by Opinion Research Corporation from Aug. 2 to 3 drew a dramatically different response when it asked people, "How well are things going in the country today?" A combined 55 percent said things were going "fairly well" (47 percent) or "very well" (8 percent), compared with those who said "pretty badly" (29 percent) or "very badly" (15 percent). Keating Holland, CNN's polling director, said the question is fundamentally different from the right track/wrong track that other pollsters ask, but he acknowledged that "it is a measurement of how well Americans think things are going in the country today."

It simply isn't credible to think that a wave election is heading the GOP's way if a majority of people think that "things were going 'fairly well' (47 percent) or 'very well...'" You 'throw the bums out' when things aren't going well, not when things are going well. Here's other numbers that you haven't heard before:

"Only 41 percent of Americans believe that Democratic leaders in Congress 'would move the country in the right direction,'" Mark Preston, CNN's political editor, writes on the network's Web site. That is slightly less than the 43 percent of Americans who believe that Republican leaders in Congress 'would move the country in the right direction.'" What this means, Mr. Preston said, is that "Democrats need to do a better job of convincing voters they are better equipped than Republicans to lead the Congress."

In other words, CNN's own polling shows that people either don't like Democrats or they think they wouldn't improve the situation that already exists. Let's combine these findings and see if they make sense together. A wave election is coming the GOP's way because (a) a majority of people think that the country is either doing fairly well or very well and (b) because more voters think that Republicans would take the country in the right direction than think Democrats would take it in. That's the type of twisted 'logic' that only a Democrat could agree with.

Other pollsters are finding that no matter how negative voters are about the Republicans who control both houses of Congress, less than a majority think the Democrats would do a better job of governing. Moreover, many voters who say they will vote for a Democrat in November also say their vote is not definite.

Pundits like Larry Sabato, Charlie Cook and Stuart Rothenberg who think this election might be spelling doom for the GOP should consider the fluid nature of this election season. This is hardly the type of information that leads to negative forecasts for the GOP.

In fact, I'd suggest that this information tells us that most of the polling 'reported' thus far is more wishful thinking than science.

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Posted Monday, August 21, 2006 9:45 AM

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