An interesting nugget from PPP. According to their latest poll, Republicans are extremely bullish on their chances for recapturing Congress — 74% think they’ll capture the House and 62% think they get the Senate. That’s pretty optimistic for the Senate, but maybe not too far off on the House. But Democrats look likely not to know what hit them on November 3rd. Only 22% of Dems see a House loss and only 17% one in the Senate.
Now, this raised a few different thoughts for me. One was that, as PPP notes, Dems seems really out to lunch on what seems to be brewing on election day. But it also suggests that a lot of the lack of enthusiasm is tied to not thinking anything particularly bad is going to happen for their party. So if the stakes and the foreboding climate become more clear, that could get Democratic base voters more jazzed up to turn out to vote.
Who knows? It’s possible.
One other thought too though. I haven’t looked back at the polling data. But my recollection is that in 2006, it was the same, or reversed, depending on your perspective. Polling pointed to a Democratic landslide all through 2006. But Republican voters were generally more bullish on their parties ability to hold Congress. And weirdly, Democrats were too. Democrats were not as confident as the polls suggested they should be. I take from this that Republicans always think they’re going to kick butt — both when they are and when they’re not.
