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Angry Independents Add Up to Doom for Democrats
 Doug Thompson - Capitol Hill Blue
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September 23, 2010
| | Independents’ sullenness underscores how difficult it will be for Democratic candidates to win them over this election. | |
For the upcoming midterm elections, the theme is — once again — change but the change voters want is something Democrats ain’t offering.
And Democrats face an increasing number of independents who say they are mad as hell about the way Democrats are running the country and they want change in Congress.
In fact, independents are as mad as Republicans and that’s bad news for Democrats.
More bad news for Democrats clinging to control of Congress: Independent voters are nearly as grumpy as Republicans about politics this year.
The Associated Press-GfK Poll shows 58 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans said politics is making them angry, compared with 31 percent of Democrats.
At least 7 in 10 independents and Republicans were disgusted while 4 in 10 Democrats expressed the same sentiment. The poll shows independents and Republicans more disappointed, depressed and frustrated over the way Democrats run things.
This is bad news for Democrats because independent voters helped propel them into control of Congress in 2006 and into the White House in 2008.
Democrats face judgment day on Nov. 2 Election Day when a lagging economy and President Barack Obama‘s plunging popularity give Republicans a shot at capturing control of Congress. Independents, who can be pivotal in many congressional races, now prefer GOP candidates over Democrats by 52 percent to 36 percent and this number jumpd to 62 percent to 29 percent among independents considered likeliest to vote.
“There’s a yellow light flashing” for Democrats in the numbers, Ann Crigler, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, tells the Associated Press.
The AP reports:
| Combined with other findings, independents’ sullenness underscores how difficult it will be for Democratic candidates to win them over this election.
Only about a third of independents say the country is moving in the right direction and more than half say Obama is doing a poor job as president. Three-quarters disapprove of Congress, only about a third want Democrats to control Capitol Hill next year and more than 8 in 10 call the economy poor — similar to Republicans and exceeding the two-thirds of Democrats who say so.
“I’m not happy with Republicans,” said Ed Perry, 66, an independent from Lowell, Ohio, who thinks government is too large and expressed anger in the poll. “But I’m really unhappy with Democrats.”
Independents’ feelings about politics have sunk along with everyone else’s since Obama’s November 2008 election. They’re more than twice as likely to be disappointed and five times likelier to be angry than they were in an AP-GfK Poll taken days after Obama’s victory. They’re also half as likely to say they are proud and excited.
Among independents who said in this month’s poll that they supported Obama in 2008, only a quarter say their vote this fall will be a show of support for him. More than 8 in 10 express frustration and disappointment, and just under half trust Democrats most to handle the economy.
Independents’ dismal views of the country’s direction and their negative ratings of the president and Congress mirror the midterm elections in 2006 when President George W. Bush was in office and the GOP controlled Congress, as measured by an AP-Ipsos Poll that September. That suggests the gloomy mood that swept Republicans from congressional control that year could work against Democrats this fall.
The poll was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications from Sept. 8-13, using landline and cell phone interviews with 1,000 randomly chosen adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points for adults and 6.4 percentage points for independents. |
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