Clarity when it matters most

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Domenico Montanaro

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Simone Pathe

When Republicans have an edge on this poll question, they usually win big

Politics

The Morning Line

Today in the Morning Line:

  • Republicans have another likely voter advantage
  • Security is the latest issue of the scattershot campaign
  • It’s the demographics, stupid
  • Romney 2016? Not likely, but here’s what his lead in a new poll says about the GOP primary field

Another poll, another GOP edge: Republicans have a 49-44 percent advantage on who Americans want to control Congress among likely voters in a new NBC/WSJ/Annenberg poll. They have a 2-point edge 45-43 percent among registered voters. The Wall Street Journal: “The survey is yet more evidence that Democratic voters are tuning out the midterms. Democrats carried a 10-point lead among low-interest voters, whom the party is trying to reach and motivate with vigorous turnout operations across the country. Republicans carried a 10-point lead in the new survey among voters who said they were highly interested in the election.” Generic ballot numbers can be tough to read, but generally when Republicans lead, that can spell big gains. Before the GOP 2010 wave elections, Republicans had a 2-point lead among registered voters in the last NBC/WSJ poll before the election. In the final NBC/WSJ poll before the 2006 election, in which Democrats took back the House, Democrats had a whopping 15(!)-point lead. In 2002, despite the history of losses for a president’s party, Republicans defied gravity and picked up eight seats in the House and two seats in the Senate. In the generic ballot question, Republicans led 43-42 percent.

Now, it’s shaping up to be a security election? An online poll paid for by Politico found “two-thirds of likely voters said they feel that the United States has lost control of its major challenges. Only 36 percent said the country is ‘in a good position to meet its economic and national security’ hurdles. If no individual issue has come to define this election — like health care in the 2010 campaign or the Iraq War in 2006 — the accumulation of disparate fears has created a sense of pessimism and frustration across the midterm landscape.” The Washington Post’s Matea Gold goes to North Carolina and finds Republican Thom Tillis firing up conservatives with talk of Ebola and the president’s handling. It’s pretty remarkable that Ebola has become the latest issue of the scattershot election. Issues in this election have ranged from health care to the unaccompanied minors crisis to the Islamic State to Ebola. Republicans, more than anything, are trying to make this election about competence with their base voters. In fact, get this from the Politico* poll: “Voters in the midterm battleground states are evenly split on whether President Barack Obama or George W. Bush was more effective at managing the federal government. Thirty-eighty percent named Bush, while 35 percent preferred Obama. A quarter of respondents said the two men were equally competent.”

It’s the demographics, stupid: If it’s the economy, stupid, then it’s also the demographics, stupid. And despite the possible Democratic hopes in South Dakota, Kansas and Georgia, the fundamentals of this election tilt heavily toward Republicans because of where these races are being run. That said, if Republicans can’t win in this landscape… One problem, though, that they face is their negative favorability ratings. The party’s favorable/unfavorable score was 27-50 percent in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, while Democrats were marginally more positive — 37-43 percent.

Black voters key to Democratic hopes: Speaking of demographics, the New York Times gets its hands on a “confidential memo from a former pollster for President Obama,” which “contained a blunt warning for Democrats. Written this month with an eye toward Election Day, it predicted ‘crushing Democratic losses across the country’ if the party did not do more to get black voters to the polls. … African-Americans could help swing elections in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and possibly Arkansas, a New York Times analysis of voter data shows, but only if they turn out at higher-than-forecast rates. They will also be important in Kentucky, where Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic Senate candidate, refuses to say if she voted for President Obama — a stance that black leaders … fear will depress turnout.”

Where race matters most: Back in April, we broke down where non-white voters could matter most — Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and Arkansas in that order. “Although more than 1.1 million black Georgians went to the polls in 2012, only about 741,000 voted in 2010,” the Times writes. “In North Carolina, Democrats say there are nearly one million black registered voters who did not vote in 2010.” Said the pollster, Cornell Belcher: “If you tell me in Georgia that, on the closing of the polls, the electorate is 32 percent African-American, I’m going to tell you we have probably elected a Democratic senator. That’s not theory. It’s basic math.” Black Georgia voters made up 30 percent of the electorate in the 2008 presidential election, and President Obama lost by just 5 points. While it’s true to get that close, Democrat Michelle Nunn has to turn out black voters in big numbers, to put her over the top, she probably has to replicate former Sen. Max Cleland’s map, the last Democrat elected to the Senate from Georgia in 1996. He did so narrowly and won not just metro Atlanta and the “Black Belt” counties but also rural counties in the Central and Southern portions of the state.

Republicans could use a man like Mitt Romney again? Here come the 2016 horse-race polls that will inevitably not predict who the nominee will be. But they do tell you something about how uncertain and unpredictable the 2016 GOP field will be. Even though his wife Ann says no way, no how will her husband run again, Mitt Romney leads the Republican field in a new ABC/Washington Post poll. Romney gets 21 percent followed by Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee tied at 10 percent apiece; Rand Paul gets 9 percent; and Chris Christie at 8 percent and Paul Ryan at 5 percent. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, continues to blow away the Democratic field with 64 percent support from Democrats. Joe Biden is a distant second with 13 percent, followed by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 11 percent.

LINE ITEMS

  • The Pentagon announced a special Ebola response team of medical experts to be deployed to any region in the United States where new cases pop up.

  • President Obama hit the campaign trail for Democratic gubernatorial candidates this weekend, helping Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn rally support from key constituencies and stress the importance of their tuning out to vote. Mr. Obama told the audience in Chicago that he’d be voting there Monday morning.

  • In an early morning order Saturday, the Supreme Court said that Texas can use its strict voter ID law in next month’s elections.

  • In a new ad, American Crossroads hits Alaska Sen. Mark Begich for Congress’ failure to approve open drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

  • The New Orleans Times-Picayune endorsed Sen. Mary Landrieu.

  • Voters in 34 states and the District of Columbia can now cast ballots in person.

  • Another term is not all Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is fighting for this fall; his viability as a presidential candidate is also on the line.

  • Iowa’s competitive Senate race has given a boost to down-ballot Republicans running in three of Iowa’s four congressional districts.

  • Spending in North Carolina’s Senate race is on track to top $103 million.

  • The unemployment rate has dropped 2 percentage points since November 2012 — the largest decline between a presidential and midterm election, notes economist Justin Wolfers. And yet, voters don’t seem enthused about the economy.

  • Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren campaigned for Iowa’s Bruce Braley over the weekend.

  • Hillary Clinton heads to Maine this week to stump for Rep. Mike Michaud.

  • President Obama speaks to Jeffrey Toobin about his legal legacy in the New Yorker. “I think being a Justice is a little bit too monastic for me,” the president said when asked about his serving on the high court one day. “Particularly after having spent six years and what will be eight years in this bubble, I think I need to get outside a little bit more.”

  • If there’s one thing we know already about the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, which Aaron Blake notes “are set to begin in earnest in about three weeks,” it’s that the tea party is behind.

  • Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, himself in a wheelchair from a 1984 accident, isn’t happy about an attack ad from Democratic State Sen. Wendy Davis that accuses him of limiting the amount of damages plaintiffs can receive in personal injury lawsuits.

  • Keep an eye on the Rundown blog for breaking news throughout the day, our home page for show segments, and follow @NewsHour for the latest.

TOP TWEETS

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Questions or comments? Email Domenico Montanaro at dmontanaro-at-newshour-dot-org or Rachel Wellford at rwellford-at-newshour-dot-org.

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Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the poll mentioned here that surveyed whether voters considered President Barack Obama or President George W. Bush to be more effective at managing the federal government.

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