The House Majority PAC — a fundraising machine charged with boosting Democratic numbers in Congress — released polls today which suggest saying you struggle on the $174,000 taxpayers pay you for being in the House isn’t exactly the right move if you want to keep your job.
House Majority PAC sponsored 12 PPP polls in vulnerable GOP districts earlier this month. What they found backed up national polling showing voters growing disenchanted with the Republican majority they put in charge of the House in 2010. And that’s not good news for Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), the man who had to apologize for saying it’s hard to raise his large family on a salary three-and-half times that of his average constituent.
The PPP numbers show just 43% of the people in Duffy’s district would like to see him return to Capitol Hill for a second term, while 51% are ready for someone new. More than half (52%) have a negative view of Republicans in Congress. Only 39% have positive one.
Those are some of the better numbers for a Republican that PPP found in the polling it did for House Majority PAC. And those are not great numbers.
Duffy, of course, has been a prime target for Democratic attack for months. House Majority PAC, as one example, recently blasted his district with ads attacking him for enjoying a plate of sushi now and again.
But the full picture of the polling shows Duffy’s not the only one with a problem.
“The national numbers point to the possibility for Democrats to reclaim a majority in the House next year, and a series of polls conducted by PPP in 12 individual Congressional districts last week backs up what the national numbers are showing,” writes PPP’s Tom Jensen.
Redistricting — which after the 2010 census is largely controlled by Republican legislatures and was expected to be a boon to the GOP — may not be the factor Democrats feared, Jensen writes.
“The 12 districts we polled are all in states where redistricting has already occurred — Arkansas, California, Illinois, and Wisconsin,” Jensen writes. “And in all 12 we found the same thing- voters would like to replace the Republican incumbent with someone else, and for the most part the new GOP House majority is proving to be extremely unpopular.”
Read more of the results here.
