Welcome To Political Hell, Democrats: Republicans Trusted More On Every Top Issue

by John Hawkins | October 23, 2009 4:40 pm

Holy switcherolli, Batman. Barack Obama has flipped the political world upside down for the Democrats.

Let me take you back to a RWN post[1] from June 9 of this year,

That brings me to the Rasmussen polling data that my co-blogger Melissa Clouthier discussed yesterday on Right Wing News.

Here are the key numbers from Rasmussen that are being widely cited.

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on six out of 10 key issues, including the top issue of the economy.

At first glance, that data appears to be good news for the GOP, but that undersells it. When you look at the trends, those are actually phenomenal numbers for Republicans and terrifying numbers for the Democrats.

Why?

Because one year ago, in the June of 2008 survey from Rasmussen, the Democrats were ahead on all 10 issues:

Economy: Dems +14
Nat’l Security/War on Terror: Dems +3
Iraq: Dems +8
Gov’t Ethics & Corruption: Dems +13
Health Care: Dems +17
Social Security: Dems +11
Education: Dems +16
Taxes: Dems +2
Immigration: Dems +4
Abortion: Dems +7

Fast forward to the newest Rasmussen poll on the issues[2]:

For the first time in recent years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The GOP holds double-digit advantages on five of them.

How does it break down and how does it compare to those June 2008 numbers? Let me show you. What follows is the current Republican lead and the size of the shift from the June 2008 poll in parentheses:

Economy: Reps +14 (28)
Nat’l Security: Reps +23 (26)
Iraq: Reps +19 (27)
Gov’t Ethics: Reps +4 (17)
Health Care: Reps +6 (23)
Social Security: Reps +8 (19)
Education: Reps +5 (21)
Taxes: Reps +15 (17)
Immigration: Reps +7 (11)
Abortion: Reps +12 (19)

In other words, at this moment, Republicans are in considerably better shape than the Dems were in during the 2008 election. Having a (D) beside of your name in an election right now is probably worth minus 6-8 points off of what your election totals would be otherwise. Republicans are even winning on issues like education and health care, which are traditionally every bit as strong for Dems as Republicans are on national security.

How did the Dems get in this position? There are a lot of factors that have played into it, but the biggest one is very simple: They keeping pushing big, really unpopular legislation over the objections of the American people.

Meanwhile, what are the Democrats slated to spend the next few months doing? Pushing Health Care and Cap and Trade: big, unpopular legislation that the American people don’t want.

The Democrats are working overtime to create a political tsunami that may be as big as or even BIGGER than 1994. Will it play out that way? Politics can be hard to predict, public opinion can be fickle, and it’s a mistake to underestimate the Republican ability to screw-up a sure thing; so we can’t be sure. That being said, the Democrats are sailing their party towards a political iceberg at full speed ahead and unless they change course, it’s entirely possible that they’re going to hit it.

Endnotes:
  1. RWN post: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/mt331/2009/06/rasmussen_polling_on_the_issue.php
  2. Rasmussen poll on the issues: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/trust_on_issues

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/democrats/welcome-to-political-hell-democrats-republicans-trusted-more-on-every-top-issue/