2008 Political Outlook and Presidential Overview
By Charlie Cook
June 29, 2007
THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE
There are two distinct schools of thought regarding the 2008 elections. The first teaches that after six and a half years of George W. Bush's presidency, the Republican 'brand' has been badly tarnished. As a result, it would take an enormous amount of luck for Republicans to hold the White House or win back control of the Senate or House, let alone accomplish any combination of the three. Most backers of this theory see the GOP as likely to go through a long and painful rebuilding process that will make recapturing the White House or congressional majorities unlikely in the near future.
The other school says that although the Republican brand has been badly damaged, the public mood remains as ugly today as it was before the tidal wave election last November. That is that Democrats in Congress have accomplished very little, leaving voters unimpressed with their leadership. Adherents to this point of view conclude that a problematic volatility has been created for all incumbents and that while voters may still be anti-Republican, they are certainly not pro-Democratic. They warn that voters may be receptive to insurgent candidates of either or no party come 2008.
The Republican Apocalypse?
Evidence abounds corroborating the first view that Republicans are in exceedingly bad shape. Even in the best of times, it is hard for a party to win the presidency in three consecutive elections. Republican Vice President Richard Nixon was not able to do it in 1960 after two terms with Dwight Eisenhower as President. In 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey was not able to do it after eight years of Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The same was the case for President Gerald Ford in 1976 after two Nixon-Ford terms. And while Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, the decisive Electoral College vote prevented him from assuming the mantle from President Bill Clinton after his eight years in office. The only time in the post-World War II era that a party won the White House for three consecutive terms was after eight years under President Ronald Reagan, who sported job approval ratings in the mid-50s at the time Vice President George H. W. Bush was victorious. But the circumstances after eight years under President Reagan are a far cry from those today.
According to Pollster.com, President Bush's job approval ratings now average about 30 percent--over the last half century only President's Nixon and Carter's approval numbers have dropped this low. If a "time for change" sentiment usually accumulates after eight years of a party in power, it sure has now. Whether you want to call it rotating the tires on a car or rotating the crops in the field, change is sometimes viewed as necessary and if polls are to be believed, that would appear to be the case today.
Much of this is driven by public antipathy for the Iraq War. Pollster.com shows that an average of just 37.6 percent of Americans now believe that going to war with Iraq was the right thing to do compared with 57.6 percent who believe it was a mistake. Similarly, only 34.5 percent believe the war has been worth the costs, while 63.7 percent believe it has not been worth it. But the political fallout towards President Bush from the war tends to bleed over into other issues. When people turn decisively against a President on one issue, their disapproval taints how they see that President on just about all other issues. At a certain point, that President is seen as unable to do anything right, and Americans tend to hit a mute button and hear nothing else that President says. It's pretty clear that Americans have hit that point.
A June NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll showed that just 29 percent of voters approved of the job Bush was doing, while 66 percent disapproved. On handling the economy, his approval rating was 36 percent, with 57 percent disapproval. On handling the situation in Iraq, 26 percent approved, while 68 percent disapproved.
A June 4-6 Associated Press/Ipsos poll put President Bush's approval rating a bit better; 32 percent approved and 66 percent disapproved. On handling the economy, 37 percent approved, while 59 percent disapproved. On handling "domestic" issues like health care, education, the environment and energy, 32 percent approved, while 66 percent disapproved. On "handling foreign policy issues and the war on terrorism," 35 percent approved and 63 percent disapproved. Only 28 percent approved of Bush's handling of "the situation in Iraq;" 69 percent disapproved.
When an ABC News/ Washington Post poll conducted at the end of May and beginning of June asked voters who they trusted to do a better job handling various issues, President Bush badly trailed Democrats in Congress. Democrats had an 18-point lead on the economy (54 percent to 36 percent), a 17-point lead on immigration issues (48 percent to 31 percent), and a 16-point lead on the situation in Iraq (51 percent to 35 percent). The only issue that was close was the handling of the U.S. campaign against terrorism, where Democrats only held a six-point lead, 46 percent to 40 percent.
Additionally, the gap between the numbers of Americans who identify themselves as Democrats and Republicans has widened considerably, and the Republicans are facing an increasingly large deficit. Each year, the Gallup Organization aggregates all their national political polling, resulting in massive sample sizes: in 2006 alone, they surveyed 30,655 voters. When voters were asked whether they consider themselves Democrats, Republicans or independents (with the sequence rotated), Democrats had a 34.3 percent to 30.4 percent advantage, the widest lead for either party since 1999.
But when those who initially chose independent were asked which party they leaned toward--a statistic called 'leaned party identification'--the Democratic advantage ballooned out to 10.2 points, 50.4 percent to 40.2 percent. This advantage is the widest recorded since Gallup began tracking leaned party identification and the first time that a party has reached 50 percent on leaned identification. In 2003, Republicans had an advantage on this measurement by one-tenth of a percentage point (45.2 percent to 45.1 percent). In 2004, Democrats pulled ahead by 2.7 percent (47.9 percent to 45.2 percent), and in 2005 Democrats had a 4.4 percent advantage, (47.7 percent to 43.2 percent).
More recent polling suggests those margins are growing still wider, with Democrats enjoying an advantage of 14 points in that early June AP/Ipsos poll, 36 percent to 22 percent. In the NBC/ WSJ poll taken about the same time, the margin was ten points, 31 percent to 21 percent. When independents were asked which way they leaned and allocated to the two parties, the Democratic edge in the AP/Ipsos poll widened to 18 points, 54 percent to 36 percent, while in the NBC/ WSJ poll, it widened just a point to 11 percent, 43 percent to 32 percent.
While the Democratic edge in party identification certainly helped Democrats win seats last November, it was the swing of independents, who voted for Democrats by an 18-point margin, 57 percent to 39 percent, that gave Democrats their decisive win of 30 House seats, six Senate seats, and six governorships. A widened Democratic advantage in party identification and continued weakness for Republicans among independents could easily translate into substantial Republican losses in 2008 as well.
This large and widening gap between the parties is important because the U.S. is in a period of intense partisanship, with upwards of 90 percent of partisans voting for the presidential candidate of their own party. Partisans usually stay loyal in competitive congressional elections as well. The way independents vote generally makes up most of the difference in competitive races. Given the extreme levels of partisanship and party cohesion among partisans on Election Day, it makes a substantial difference when one party takes a big lead in party identification over the other.
All of this supports the thesis that President Bush and the war in Iraq have become such liabilities for Republicans that they enter the 2008 elections as decided underdogs. Supporting this view, an early June NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll found that Democrats had a 21-point generic advantage in next year's presidential race; 52 percent of Americans said they preferred a Democrat be elected while only 31 percent preferred a Republican.
Earlier this year, I heard a prominent Republican pollster lament: "Remember when we [Republicans] used to beat the [expletive deleted] out of Democrats with Jimmy Carter? We used to just wrap him around Democrats' throats! They're going to be doing this to us with this guy [President Bush] for years to come." Things have only gotten worse since this pollster's prediction, and subsequent conversations with him and his colleagues are even grimmer today.
Or, "A Pox on Both Your Houses"
Having made the first case, there is considerable data to support the second view as well. The war in Iraq was the single biggest factor driving the 2006 election, but that election had many moving parts and causes, not the least of which was scandal. For many voters, Democrats had one principle mandate: to bring the war in Iraq to an end. While Democrats won majorities in both houses of Congress, the Constitution was not amended, President Bush remains the dominant figure on foreign policy matters, and Democrats did not win sufficient veto-proof majorities to overcome his decisions. So even though Democrats have a legitimate reason for not being able to bring closure to the war, the public wanted and expected it to end, and thus perceive that Democrats have not been able to deliver.
Beyond the war, Democrats have not been particularly successful in advancing other issues either. In 2006, Democrats ran on a platform of six major planks: enact the 9/11 Commission recommendations, increase the federal minimum wage, expand stem cell research, negotiate for lower Medicare prescription drug prices, cut interest rates on student loans, and end subsidies to oil and gas companies and invest in renewable energy. Of those goals, only the minimum wage hike has been signed into law. While Democrats have legitimate reasons as to why the others have failed thus far, ranging from the threat of Republican filibusters in the Senate to presidential vetoes, the fact remains that they have only accomplished one.
Finally, there have been sufficient real and alleged ethical and legal transgressions and embarrassments on the part of Democrats, including the indictment of Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana. Republicans have been able to charge that nothing has changed, playing into the long-standing suspicion of many voters that politicians are politicians, and that their ethics and scruples are not dictated by whether they wear red or blue jerseys.
In recent polling, congressional job approval ratings now average about 25 percent, while the Gallup poll shows that just 14 percent of Americans have either "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress. In the 1970s and for a brief time in 1986, those Gallup figures peaked just above 40 percent.
It's clear that today, a broader mood of pessimism plagues the country. An average of recent polling compiled by Pollster.com shows that just 22.3 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction, while 72.4 percent say it's off on the wrong track. Though not a historic low, these are the kinds of numbers that are present before major electoral shakeups--numbers that ought to make any incumbent federal officeholder or majority party in Congress exceedingly nervous.
Apocalypse or Pox, Which is It?
Reconciling these two disparate views isn't easy, and the truth, as usual, probably lies somewhere in between. Americans are very critical of congressional Democrats, but even more so of Republicans. According to Pollster.com's averages of recent major national polls, 40.5 percent of Americans approve the job Democrats in Congress are doing, and 46.1 percent disapprove. While these are lousy numbers, they are better than the 35.4 percent who approve of Republicans in Congress and 63.5 percent who disapprove. It is worth noting that only 1.1 percent don't have an opinion of congressional Republicans, but 13.4 percent haven't yet formed a judgment concerning their Democratic colleagues.
Unless the public starts electing large numbers of independents or the two parties just trade incumbent losses, American politics remains binary: everything is either zero or one, Democrat or Republican. A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research/Democracy Corps poll conducted in mid-June surveyed 1,600 likely voters in 70 battleground congressional districts, 35 districts from each party that are thought to be in the most danger. It showed Democrats ahead of Republicans by nine percentage points, 50 percent to 41 percent. While this poll was conducted by a Democratic polling firm, it has an excellent reputation among professionals in both parties and similar Democracy Corps surveys conducted last year accurately predicted large gains for the party in the November midterm elections.
The survey showed that in both the first and second tier groups of seats held by Democratic incumbents, Democrats led by 20 points, 56 percent to 36 percent, while Democrats held a statistically insignificant lead of 2 percentage points in the top tier of GOP-held seats, 45 percent to 43 percent. Democrats trailed GOP candidates by 13 points, 51 percent to 38 percent, in the second tier Republican-held districts. In each district, respondents were asked to choose between the incumbent, whose name and party were read to the interviewee, and "the (Democratic or Republican, whichever party is in opposition) candidate." These numbers suggest that Republicans remain more exposed to danger than Democrats in 2008, though the survey did find discontent related to how Democrats have performed so far. The strategic analysis accompanying the poll urged Democratic leaders to alternately pursue surges of engagement with the President on Iraq and surges of progress on various domestic initiatives, threading the needle between those voters who are singularly focused on Iraq and those who may care about Iraq but want to see domestic issues attended to as well.
All of this adds up to a perilous time for Republicans, but not a time for Democratic complacency either. While Democrats cannot claim a mandate--after all, people voted against Republicans, not for Democrats in 2006--there were high expectations for Democrats that have so far gone unmet. Voters' anger and disillusionment toward the GOP remains undiminished, but they did believe that Democrats would do something with their victory: either get America out of Iraq, address domestic concerns that were seen as unmet, or preferably both. For Democrats to capitalize on this opportunity, they need to deliver. Republicans need to retool for this new post-George W. Bush era, defining their party along lines that acknowledge that a new direction and agenda is an essential first step in their bid to return to power.
2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
While the fundamental diagnostic indicators virtually all point toward a significant advantage for Democrats over Republicans in next year's presidential race, an inconvenient truth for Democrats emerges when the best known Democratic contenders, Sens. Hillary Clinton (NY), Barack Obama (IL) and former Sen. John Edwards (NC), are matched up one-on-one with the best-known GOP candidates, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain (AZ).
In all six head-to-head match ups, the Pollster.com poll averages for each contest are within the margin of error, and generally each candidate receives support in the mid-40s--usually between 44 percent and 46 percent. Lesser-known GOP candidates such former Sen. Fred Thompson and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney don't fare as well in these early match ups, mainly because many voters are reticent to support someone they know little or nothing about. As Thompson and Romney get better known outside the realm of political aficionados, their general election trial heat numbers will presumably improve as well.
The Contests for the Nominations
It is really interesting to observe the vastly different trajectories of the contests between the dozen Republican candidates seeking the GOP presidential nomination and the eight Democrats campaigning for theirs. In four Cook Political Report /RT Strategies national polls taken over the April, May and June featuring 3,439 interviews with registered voters, three strong impressions emerge.
The first point that jumps out is that the Democratic primary contest is remarkably stable, with Clinton maintaining a consistent 10- or 11-point lead over Obama. Obama, in turn, holds a steady eight- or nine-point lead over Edwards, who then leads whoever happens to be leading the bottom tier, usually either Sen. Joe Biden (DE) or Gov. Bill Richardson (NM), by another dozen or so points. Movement is confined generally to a point or two, one way or the other.
The four surveys were conducted April 27-29, May 11-13, June 15-17 and June 21-23 by Thom Riehle of RT Strategies for The Cook Political Report . The margin of error for the Democratic contest, which interviewed 1,568 registered Democratic voters and independents who lean toward the Democrats, was +/-2.5. Among the 1,382 Republicans and GOP leaners, it was +/-2.6, and for the general election sample of 3,439 voters, it was +/-1.7 percent.
Over the four Democratic contest surveys, Clinton held 35 percent of the vote, followed by Obama with 24 percent, Edwards with 15 percent, Richardson with 3 percent, Biden with 2 percent, and 1 percent or less for everyone else. The most recent sampling showed precisely the same numbers, except that Biden had 3 percent and Richardson had 1 percent. In the four individual surveys, Clinton had a low of 32 percent and a high of 40 percent, and took 35 percent and 36 percent in the other two. Obama had a low of 22 percent, a high of 26 percent, and 24 percent and 25 percent in the other two. Edwards' low was 13 percent, while his high was 18 percent, and he got 15 percent and 16 percent in the other two surveys. Democratic positioning is remarkably stable, with very even spacing between candidates one and two, two and three, and three and the rest of the pack.
The second strong message from the data is that that steadiness and even spacing is not to be found on the Republican side. Giuliani began the year in Cook /RT polling with about 37 percent of the GOP primary vote, running 13 to 19 points ahead of McCain. But in this four-poll, April-June sequence, that lead has shrunk to four points: 25 percent for Giuliani to 21 percent for McCain, with Fred Thompson in third place at 12 percent and Romney in fourth at 10 percent. All others held 2 percent or less. But looking at just the most recent GOP primary sampling, Giuliani's lead over McCain was a statistically insignificant one point--22 percent to 21 percent--with Thompson at 14 percent and Romney at 12 percent. In the two combined June surveys, 22 percent of voters chose Giuliani, 18 percent picked McCain, 15 percent opted for Thompson and 9 percent chose Romney. Using the full four-poll sample, there was a steady 32-point gap between the first and fourth place Democratic candidates, while on the GOP side there was a 15-point gap between one and four, with the trend lines for one and two dropping as the trend lines for three and four rose--essentially a flattening in the GOP contest.
The stability and even spacing in the Democratic fight suggests that it would take fairly dramatic developments to upset this steady order. Meanwhile, the tightening of the GOP nomination contest, with previous frontrunners faltering and relatively newer or fresher faces rising, suggests that this is becoming more of a resource and momentum-oriented fight, putting pressure on the two early frontrunners, Giuliani and McCain, to produce the resources necessary to resurrect their earlier premier status. Conversely, Thompson and Romney have to show that they can maintain their upward momentum and produce the resources necessary to continue to fuel it still higher. In short, Giuliani and McCain have to play defense from a weaker position than before, while Thompson and Romney are on offense, seeking to build on existing momentum.
Is There an Independent Candidate in Our Future?
Finally, there is the question of whether New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will run, having recently abandoned his "flag of convenience" Republican affiliation (he was a lifelong Democrat before switching parties to seek the GOP nomination for Mayor in 2001). Though he has done a bit of the "one-step-forward, one-step-back" dance routine, the Mayor has let it be known that he might run as an independent and spend up to $1 billion of his own money if both major parties produce badly flawed or damaged nominees and he sees an opportunity to score an Electoral College majority. In a contested three-candidate race, it is thought that a winner would need to capture at least 37 percent to 39 percent of the popular vote to begin winning large numbers of states and Electoral votes. If no candidate receives a majority of the Electoral College vote, the U.S. House of Representatives would determine the winner, with each state's delegation receiving one vote, regardless of its size.
There is a considerable debate taking place about which side would be hurt most by a Bloomberg candidacy. Some say that because he was a lifelong Democrat, is liberal on most social and cultural issues, and in fact represents a very Democratic city in a very Democratic state, he might hurt that party more. Others, however, say that by running as a highly successful businessman and a managerially competent mayor, Bloomberg could draw from the ranks of secular Republicans and GOP-leaning independents who have grown estranged from their party on cultural issues including stem cell research and the Terri Schiavo case. A third theory, put forth by NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, is that because Democrats have a diehard base of about 35 percent in the South, a three-way race would make those states more competitive than they would be in a two-way configuration. Conceivably, Arkansas and Louisiana might be more playable for Democrats in a three-way race.
It would be a mistake to think of Bloomberg solely as a spoiler candidate who would tip the election toward one party or the other. The self-made billionaire is exceedingly pragmatic and does not seem to approach this as either an ego trip or a way to promote an issue or cause. He is only likely to enter this race and spend some of his estimated $5 billion to $13 billion fortune if he sees a plausible opportunity for victory. Naysayers point to the fact that Ross Perot received only 19 percent of the vote in 1992, forgetting that a June 4-8 Gallup poll that year showed Perot receiving as much as 35 percent of the vote, ahead of President George H.W. Bush by five points and ahead of Gov. Bill Clinton by 13 points. Perot subsequently appeared more idiosyncratic and dropped back below 20 percent by Election Day, but he had been a very formidable candidate and hardly appeared to be a spoiler early on. In short, it's too early to know whether Bloomberg will run or not, let alone what impact he would have, but he is smart and has very deep pockets, and thus should not be ignored or deemed inconsequential.
CONCLUSION
Republicans have a lot working against them in this campaign, but for a variety of reasons, the 2008 presidential election should end up being hotly contested; its result will certainly not be a foregone conclusion. If there is anything that should be learned from this nascent race, it is that American politics is exceedingly dynamic and 15 or 16 months is a lifetime. |
