Today marks the anniversary of the beginning of the long slide in President Obama’s approval rating, illustrated by the chart above from RealClearPolitics. Since December 22 of last year the president’s approval rating has fallen from 54% to 42.2% and the difference between approval and disapproval rating has dropped a full 22 points. One of the ironies of the RealClearPolitics average of polls the graph illustrates is that without progressives’ least favorite polls, Rasmussen and Reason’s, the average of polls would be signficantly worse for the president than it is.
The Huffington Post’s poll looks even worse:
The president’s approval is far lower than Bill Clinton’s or Ronald Reagan’s were at this point in their presidencies, roughly comparable to George W. Bush’s.
Supporters of the president might take some solace in the small uptick in the president’s popularity that has occurred over the last couple of weeks. Time will tell whether that holds and is the harbinger of a recovery or just noise in an otherwise persistent downward trend.
Whether President Obama recovers from the year-long slump or resumes his slide in popularity in the coming year, I think his supporters are going to need to resign themselves to the reality that Barack Obama’s term in office will not mark the beginning of an “Obama coalition” that will result in Democratic domination of the national political scene as was the case for Franklin Roosevelt nearly 80 years ago. By this time in FDR’s presidency he was receiving enthusiastic support from the popular Republican mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia. There have been no comparable crossovers in Obama’s presidency and I think that the president’s election is more an indicator that a realignment along demographic lines has occurred rather than one of a future realignment. The alignment we have now can probably be expected to endure for the foreseeable future.
As I remarked in a post at OTB today, the big news of the midterm elections of 2014, whether Republicans hold the House or take the Senate or any other combination, is how many incumbents will be re-elected and how few seats ultimately change from Democratic to Republican or vice versa.
As I remarked in a post at OTB today, the big news of the midterm elections of 2014, whether Republicans hold the House or take the Senate or any other combination, is how many incumbents will be re-elected and how few seats ultimately change from Democratic to Republican or vice versa.
I scanned OTB today, first time in a long time, and happened to catch the above remark. Personally, I think it’s very dubious the R’s could lose the House. As for the Senate, there are some red state seats that are in play. If obamacare continues to be in disfavor, then I think the R’s take a small edge in the Senate.
While incumbency is hard to beat, we have an especially disgruntled public, and I think change to someone else might be weighing enthusiastically on people’s minds in 2014 — change away from the change we experienced from 2009 forward.
I think that Republicans are likely to hold the House. If anything that supports my point about incumbency.
At this point in order to take control of the Senate Republicans would have to take all of the seats presently held by Democrats that are leaning Republican and at least one seat that’s a toss-up or leans Democratic. Not a longshot but still far from likely.
At this point if I had to rank the scenarios in descending order of likelihood they would be:
– Republicans hold House, Democrats hold Senate, i.e. no change
– Republicans hold House and take the Senate
– Democrats take House and hold Senate
– Democrats take House and lose Senate
However, I’d be willing to make a small cash wager that two-thirds or more of incumbents will be re-elected. Heck, I might even give odds.
Dave,
Part of the safety net of the House is the redistricting that was done to assure R’s of holding on to their CDs.
As for the Senate, it might be my own partisanship rearing it’s head, but I would switch your second scenario to a top position, making it the most likely, leaving the dems holding the Senate and the R’s the House as the second most likely outcome. The rest of your descending order stays the same.
Your two-thirds incumbency call is likely. So, all bets are off on that one. As I see it, only a minority of seats will be really competitive. But, it would take a relatively small number of changes in the Senate to alter the majority status of this chamber. And, boy would I love to see that happen — exchanging the face of Harry Reid for someone else leading the agenda, including carrying on all the rule changes Reid made, such as the nuclear option.
Off-topic, Dave, but I was hoping you’d at some point comment on this:
A new analysis, buried in a UN report, reveals that one of the two missiles at the center of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, which nearly led to a U.S. military attack, showed no evidence of Sarin, further undermining Official Washington’s certainty that the Syrian government was to blame, reports Robert Parry.
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/13/fresh-doubts-about-syrias-sarin-guilt/
I have kept, shall we say, an open mind as to whether the Syrian government was behind the chemical weapons attack that took place in Syria. Most of the information that has surfaced since the crisis was hot back in September has not supported the Obama Adminstration’s position on the attack.
More significantly whoever was behind the attacks and whatever their nature the agreement worked out with the Assad regime has effectively inoculated the regime against attack by the West. No wonder the regime leapt on the agreement. Since then they’ve killed thousands more Syrian civilians, taken back a lot of territory formerly held by the rebels, and consolidated their hold on the country. Not a peep from France, the UK, or the U. S. They couldn’t’ve bought that kind of tacit cooperation.
I don’t know if I agree or disagree w/ Dave, but my explanation for matters is this:
The situation in the House is dominated by the Republicans’ historic 2010 election, which was directly or indirectly a result of healthcare reform. The Republicans lost a few seats in 2012, which they are likely to regain, but they aren’t likely to gain more on healthcare since it’s baked into this pie. The Democratic situation is that it’s hard to run an insurgency campaign when your party controls the Presidency and the Senate.
The Senate has several Democrats up for election who did not have to face the 2010 storm. Republicans could pick up three to nine seats. If they pick up six or more it would be a large turnover historically speaking. Senators know their state politics better than us national navel-gazers and usually don’t make big mistakes. If the Rs take over the Senate it will be seen as a referendum on Obama or the PPACA, and an educational experience for future Senators.
(I’m still predicting that the Rs only pick-up five in the Senate, but might switch to six.)
A change of five seats would mean tie, leaving the Senate in the control of the Democrats. That scenario would require the Republicans to take all the seats that presently lean Republican plus both of the states that are toss-ups (Alaska and Arkansas).
Tom Cotton has an excellent chance of defeating Pryer. However, Alaska is less optimistic for the Rs to take, IMO.