dcorps resurgent republic post election memo.final

8/13/2019 DCorps Resurgent Republic Post Election Memo.finaL

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Date: November 9, 2010

To: Friends of Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner

From: Stan Greenberg and James Carville

1994=2010 Report on the Democracy Corps and Resurgent Republic bipartisan post election poll

They were angover health care.

November 2 nd was a very bad day for Democrats indeed, the worst since November 8,1994 when Democrats lost their four-decade hold on the House of Representatives, control of theUS Senate and 472 state legislative seats across the country. Newt Gingrich and his new majori-ties were triumphant. I was polling then for President Bill Clinton and the poll findings today inthis joint poll with Resurgent Republic look eerily similar. On election night, an identical two-thirds said the country is seriously off on the wrong track; an identical 45 percent said Clintonand Obama were moving the country in the right direction; and Clinton and Obama had almostidentical favorability ratings split evenly between favorable and unfavorable responses.

And we all know how that story ended presidentially two years later, Bob Dole got only41 percent of the vote and Bill Clinton won an Electoral College landslide. While this surveyfully documents the scale of the Republicans historic election victory, it underscores evenmore the risks for the new Republican majority and opportunities for President Obama and theDemocrats in seeing history repeat itself.

What Message Voters Were Sending 1

Make no mistake about the seriousness of what the voters said on Election Day. Votersexpressed their deep discontent voting against the Democrats and the Obama agenda and veryconscious that they were seeking to end Democratic control of the Congress. Voters wanted to

punish Democrats.

Voters were angry over an economy stuck at 10 percent unemployment and economic policies that apparently failed to move the jobs numbers.

rier still at the lack of focus on jobs, as evident in the year-long struggle

1 Full results of the poll including gr aphs, memo and frequency questionnaire are available athttp://www.democracycorps.com/ .
http://www.democracycorps.com/http://www.democracycorps.com/http://www.democracycorps.com/http://www.democracycorps.com/


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The president and Democrats offered no economic framework, economic vision, or cam- paign message appropriate to the scale of the crisis and that would provide voters with

context for the spending, bailouts, and debt. The Democrats lost white non-college voters in general, and working class male voters in

particular, who were put off by the Democrats assertions about economic progress theywere not certain that Democrats stood with them, rather than Wall Street. Many of thesewere voters cut out of a Reagan-Democratic mold and who rejected Bushs economy inthe last two elections they have to be won back. The road back to the industrial Mid-west runs through their communities.

And voters were angry with the continuing partisan warfare, the lack of change in Wash-ington and lack of economic progress at a time of acute crisis.

So, voters had plenty to say. As Whit Ayers notes in his memo, independent voters werethe carriers of that message, cutting their vote for Democrats by 13 points, giving the Republi-cans an 18-point margin.

Misreading the Election Results

But the voters angry message for Democrats in this election is not the same as a mandatefor a ction as became evident in 1994 and now and reflected in this important bi-partisan

poll.2

To begin, we should note how discerning these voters are about the Republicans. Much

like the new Senator from West Virginia, they aimed their weapons at the Democrats, not theRepublicans for whom they have little regard for. The standing of the Republicans is no higherin this survey than it was in our post-election polls in 2008 and 2006. They are unreconstructed.Amazingly, this electorate gave the Republicans an 8-point lead in the vote, but not in party iden-tification. This election was about Democratic governance, not a new regard for the Republicanagenda and philosophy.

While some patterns in this electorate are worrisome like the further shift of the whiteSouth to the Republicans, making it very difficult to reclaim these states could well be unique encouraging Republican and conservative leaders to overreach.

2 Post election survey jointly conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Research and Ayres, McHenry & Associates forDemocracy Corps and Resurgent Republic on November 2-3, 2010 among 1,000 2008 voters, 866 of whom voted inthe 2010 election.


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10 percent unemployment, with uneven job growth and no decline in the unemploymentrate. Most would bet on that changing, even if rapid growth seems unlikely.

Seniors played an immense role in this result raising their participation as a share of theelectorate to 23 percent and their vote for Republicans by 10 points since 2008. Theywere clearly spooked by health care reform and the so-called cuts in Medicare. But thedebate on Medicare will soon shift as Republicans seek to get Medicare savings. This isone of the few areas where voters give the Democrats an advantage. And more impor-tant, young voters will soon return to the electorate in larger numbers.

The presidential electorate that matters most now will be more diverse, younger, moreunion and with more unmarried women. Their participation and support dropped in 2010

but both will surely rise as the presidential race develops.

The first two years of Obamas presidency, much like the first two of Clintons, produceda conservative surge and energy. This was an ideological election for the anti-Democratic voters. Conservatives formed 41 percent of this off-year electorate up 7

points from 2008 and 84 percent voted Republican up 9 points. That created a veryspecial electorate and shaped the independents, but new battles can change the dynamics.

Newt Gingrich soon found out how difficult this was to maintain and how difficult tocontrol.

The Tea Party movement was a big factor in this election: nearly 40 percent of Republi-can Party identifiers are strong supporters. But this is a double-edged sword. These vot-ers went to the polls to stop the Obama agenda and they are determined to see Obama

fail. On issue after issue, they are out-of-sync with the presidential year and swing vot-ers, even many of the independents. Based on the first week, Republican leaders at alllevels will compete in a race to the bottom to stop Obama.

Misreading the Mandate

The poll shows three big areas where the president has opportunities and where Republi-cans could find themselves at risk. The first is the Republicans focus on austerity, concentratingon spending cuts and deficits with a lack of attention to job growth and other priorities; second,the desire for a post-partisan politics where leaders make compromises and work together; and

third, the battle over the touchstone issues for conservative Republicans health care and taxes.The straightjacket of austerity. Punishing the Democrats for spending is not the same

thing as wanting to slash spending. Failing to see the difference could be fatal as Republicanshead into a spiral of spending cuts, seeking to out-do other conservatives.

When we asked this conservative off-year electorate what kind of Member they wanted one who would fight big corporate special deals and work for the middle class and American


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jobs, or one who would go to Washington to rein in government spending, deficits, and highertaxes they chose the former by a wide margin (52 to 40 percent). That was true for independ-ents and swing voters, and even more among presidential year voters who did not participate thisyear.

When asked whether the highest priority for making the US economy stronger and morecompetitive should be cutting the deficit or whether it should be BOTH cutting the deficit andmaking growth-producing investments, voters want both by more than two-to-one. The samewas true for independents. Voters are not looking for a cramped mission of simple austerity, butit is hard to see how Republican politicians get out of this straightjacket. Voters want policiesthat produce growth and reduce the deficit. Perhaps Dick Cheney was right when he dismisseddeficits as a Republican mantra.

Surprisingly, this electorate was divided fairly evenly on the standard question of whethergovernment should do more or less, but that is not true of those who join the presidential elector-ate who strongly want more government involvement.

The overwhelming desire for parties and leaders to work together. A large portion ofthe protest voters this year were voting against the dysfunctional polarized politics that they wit-nessed in Congress and Washington. They saw protracted conflict, divisions, special deals and afailure to fix the economy. One more time, voters are saying they want a different kind of poli-tics. There is no clearer message in this survey.

By two-to-one, voters say they want compromise to find common ground, not leaderswho take principled stands on what they believe in and pass less legislation. Independ-ents also endorse compromise in the same proportion, but the challenge for Republicansis that half of their voters say, do not compromise.

Almost 60 percent of this off-year electorate and a plurality of independents say theywant their member of Congress to work with President Obama to get things done. Butover 60 percent of Republicans want their member to mostly oppose his policies and pro-vide a check on his power.

Over 60 percent say they want congressional Republicans to work with President Obamato find solutions including 56 percent of independents but two-thirds of Republicanssay they should work to stop Obama because his agenda would harm America.

What about the voters message would Republican leaders misunderstand? It is clear theyfeel compelled to respond to the very stronger views of their base that gravitates toward conflict.

Clearly, President Obama has an opportunity in a number of policy areas to reach out toRepublicans who will have difficulty responding with civility.


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The Contested Issues. While health care was an important part of the critique of this

years off-year voters, do not assume that is a mandate on health care and taxes.

A plurality of these off-year voters were opposed to the health care reform law and in-tensity was on the side of the opponents but that changes when looking forward:

The debate on health care in the survey with Resurgent Republic advocating repealand replace, and Democracy Corps pointing out that insurance companies are lobby-ing to be able to drop people again and impose lifetime limits again comes out adraw in this conservative electorate, with the intensity advantaged neutralized. Thisdebate is only beginning.

The debate on health care this time led by Republicans who are trying to stop it at

state level and going to the brink in each budget battle can very quickly become aRepublican obsession, while the country is looking for a focus on job creation.

The debate on extending the Bush tax cuts breaks marginally for the Republicans (49 to45 percent), but that is not decisive. The Democratic argument centered on addressing the deficitand protecting Social Security, but a Democratic message centered on middle class tax cuts andthe economy might have proved stronger. In any case, neither side is decisively winning thehealth care or tax debates among these voters who gave us a Republican landslide. There is

plenty of room for these debates to evolve.

After the 1994 defeat, President Clintons standing rose with a rising economy, but also astep back from the congressional battlefield. This is reflected in his response to the OklahomaCity bombing, his battle to defend Medicare, education, and the environment from the GingrichRepublicans, and his reaching agreement with Republicans on key issues. Times are different,

but the president has an opportunity to embrace growth, defend his approach to job creation, thedeficit, taxes, health care, and reach out to Republicans on a range of other issues. The Republi-cans may have even less freedom than Speaker Gingrich to engage in each of these areas.

dcorps resurgent republic post election memo.final

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