A new battleground poll, commissioned by NPR and run by Glen Bolger and Stan Greenberg, paints a really dire picture for Democrats going into November. It’s not a conventional poll. It’s not national. They polled in 70 districts considered most likely to boot incumbents this fall, 60 of which are currently held by Democrats. (Many of these are seats where Dems either held on or picked up seats while John McCain was winning the district.)
In that subset of the population, President Obama has 54% disapproval and 40% approval. On the generic ballot Republicans are up by 5 points. This is to put it mildly, really bad news for the Democrats. There is one important caveat. Given that the Democrats hold a big House majority and given the nature of the enterprise, the poll picked up the districts where Democrats were in the most trouble. So it shouldn’t surprise us, at some level, that Dems have the deck stacked against them. Still, it’s a very sobering picture for the Dems.
The question that still remains though is this: can Republicans execute? The numbers have been bad for the Democrats all year. Actually, this poll notwithstanding, they’ve been mildly better for the Dems of late, at least at the congressional level. (The oil spill has been pulling down Obama’s numbers.) But in the relatively few head to head contests so far this year, Democrats have tended to outperform expectations and Republicans have tended to nominate non-ideal candidates.
