Democracy Corps Poll of House Battlegrounds Predicts Another Wave

You might remember that in the summer of 2006, Democracy Corps (Stan Greenberg, James Carville, and friends) released a poll that was a real “holy crap” moment for the blogosphere, the first time many of us realized “Wow, we could actually win 20 or 30 seats in the fall!” It wasn’t a poll of one seat, but rather, a poll with a huge sample size drawn from dozens of potentially competitive House districts… and it indicated that we had a good shot at winning many of those districts, which, lo and behold, we did.

Democracy Corps is back with a sequel, and it predicts similarly big results in 2008. It’s particularly impressive compared with just how far we’ve come since they did a similar poll in January 2008 (of 40 of the 45 Republican-held districts surveyed in the most recent poll; they added five more because of the expanding battleground). (Not coincidentally, January 2008 was the start of the hotly contested presidential primary… y’know, the one that was supposed to have torn us apart into a bunch of warring factions and killed our chances in November.)

We’ll start with the most basic component: the congressional named vote (where the name of the incumbent Republican is used, while a generic Democrat was referenced), for all 45 districts taken together.

Democracy Corps (5/19-26, likely voters):

Democratic candidate: 50 (45)

Republican candidate: 43 (46)

That’s a move from a one-point loss to a seven-point lead over half a year… and bear in mind, this isn’t a national poll that encompasses Democratic-held seats, only the most threatened Republican-held seats. But they then take the additional step of breaking the races down into Tier I and Tier II races (see here for the precise list of districts, but for the most part they pretty closely track SSP’s list of toss-ups and of lean/likely Rs). We’ve moved from a +6 to +9 advantage in Tier I races, and from a -6 to +3 advantage in Tier II races.

Tier I

Democratic candidate: 51 (48)

Republican candidate: 42 (42)

Tier II

Democratic candidate: 48 (43)

Republican candidate: 45 (49)

The poll also asks for job approval of the Republican incumbents, mentioned by name. Their approval rating has appreciably and ominously declined, down into the thirties (even though the gap between ‘approve’ and ‘disapprove’ hasn’t dropped as much; they’re at +5 approval rather than a +6 approval).

Approve: 38 (43)

Disapprove: 33 (37)

Participants were read one of two statements: “In November, I really want to be able to vote for a Democrat for Congress because at least he or she will fight for change,” and “In November I will vote for [incumbent Republican] because the new Democratic congress is just business as usual and getting no more done than the last one.” They were then asked which statement they agreed with, and whether they did so strongly or not so strongly. The results show a large gap in favor of the Democrats, and significant growth since January. (There’s a whiff of push-polliness about this one, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Vote for a Democrat, agree strongly: 44 (36)

Vote for a Democrat, agree not so strongly: 11 (13)

Vote for a Democrat, combined: 55 (49)

Vote to reelect, agree strongly: 28 (26)

Vote to reelect, agree not so strongly: 9 (15)

Vote to reelect, combined: 37 (41)

I don’t want to get too deep into the individual issues on this one (there’s a ton of interesting material here; click on the links for more detail), but there’s one particular highlight for me that I wanted to share, which indicates just how much the dialogue has shifted since 2004, when gay marriage hysteria helped decide the election. (I didn’t see anything about this being asked in January, so no comparison numbers.) If these numbers are coming exclusively from Republican-held battleground districts, basically, gay hysteria is dead as a wedge issue. It’s over and done.

Participants were read paragraphs that contain “But I oppose a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage because decisions about marriage should be left to the states as they always have been,” and “We need a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and preserve the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.” Again, they were asked whether they agreed with the Democratic or Republican statement, and whether they did so strongly or not so strongly.

Democratic statement, agree strongly: 35

Democratic statement, agree not so strongly: 17

Democratic statement, combined: 52

Republican statement, agree strongly: 33

Republican statement, agree not so strongly: 10

Republican statement, combined: 43

In general, this can’t be seen as a promise of winning 45 seats. And with a sample of 1,600 divided by 45, that’s only a sample of 36 per seat, so it doesn’t have any particular value for any one particular seat. But this poll has to be seen as suggesting that we have the upper hand in the 21 Tier 1 seats, and are likely to win a number of the 24 Tier 2 seats as well.

(H/t to RandySF and Andy Dufresne.)