Hopefully This Will Translate Into Votes

Posted on July 26, 2012 at 7:11 am by Bob Cesca

In chart form, here are the results of the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll showing strong favorability numbers for the president, but weak numbers for the Republicans and Mitt Romney.

And yet the national polls on the election are essentially tied. Americans are weird.

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  • Ned F

    Dems can probably pick off a seat or two, but the house will remain in GOP control. Why, after the past 2 years, I have no idea, except that people hate congress, but like their congressman, and once in are pretty hard to vote out. We have a guy in our mostly blue county who votes the straight red line. Can’t get him out of office, he’s too entrenched.

    • D_C_Wilson

      That’s a bit of a cliche and I don’t really think it’s true. I think the real reason why it’s hard to get incumbents out of Congress is because most districts are so gerrymandered that one party could nominate a stuffed bear and it would win. It’s the only possible explanation for how someone like Michele Bachmann, Steven King, or Louie “Terror Babies” Gohmert could stay in office.

      I would say that at least 3/4 of all seats in the House are in “safe” districts, which means a small minority of swing districts basically dictate who controls the House.

      Now, whether that means the House is in play or not this election is another matter. This is by far the most unpopular Congress since pollsters started tracking this. It’s even more unpopular than the famous “Do Nothing” Congress that Truman ran against.

      This is also the first election since redistricting, so a big test will be how well did the republicans on the state level manage to protect their colleagues in Washington.

      Between gerrymandering and public rancor, I’d say it’s a toss up.

  • muselet

    And yet the national polls on the election are essentially tied. Americans are weird.

    True, Americans are weird, but we’re weird in an illogically logical way.

    The public is feeling economically insecure and needs to find someone to blame. But people pay as little attention to politics and government as they possibly can—which explains a lot of recent phenomena in politics and government—and so are not really equipped to analyze who’s really to blame for the economic doldrums we’re in. If people did, every congressional R (and not a few Ds) would long since have been run out of Washington DC on a rail.

    The public is blaming—as usual—the incumbent president, rightly or wrongly. The public emphatically does not like Mitt Romney, but he benefits from not being the guy who’s currently in office. (Yes, there’s also a lot of Kenyanmarxistsocialist ooga-booga going on, too, but any incumbent president in this combination of economic and political circumstances would be struggling in the polls.)

    –alopecia

  • Ipecac

    And stupid! Don’t forget stupid.

    And shortsighted! And uninformed. And . . .

  • D_C_Wilson

    The good news is, President Obama has been widening his lead in many of the key swing states.

  • jjasonham

    I’m sorry, but WHO are they polling, man? I have never, ever gotten polled, and maybe 1 out of every 25 people I’ve ever asked has.