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New Gallup/USA Today Poll Offers Encouraging News for Pro-Lifers

Dec 14, 2011

By Dave Andrusko

I know, I know, every day another poll. But today’s Gallup/USA Today poll is particularly interesting for several long-term reasons, even in light of a reminder by the well-respected Charlie Cook that in “this new over-caffeinated cable- and blog-driven campaign-media culture, one would never know that the nomination will not be settled in three weeks. Between now and final primaries, there will be more than 150 mornings of daily newspaper front pages and evenings of nightly news programs. The temptation to extrapolate the end result from whatever seems to be happening today seems to be pervasive.”

Having said that, the Gallup/USA Today poll nonetheless is encouraging for many reasons.

·         Although it’s hard to extrapolate from head-to-head match ups between pro-abortion President Obama and pro-lifers Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney this early, it’s noteworthy that “In a dozen key swing states across the country, President Barack Obama is trailing Mitt Romney by 5 percentage points and Newt Gingrich by 3 percentage points,” writes POLITICO’s MJ Lee.

·         “In the dozen key states, the number of self-identified Democrats in these key states fell from 35 percent to 30 percent since 2008,” Lee writes. “During the same time period, the number of Republicans rose by 5 percentage points, while the number of independents increased by a whopping 7 points – from 35 percent in 2008 to 42 percent. In the 12 swing states, 44 percent of those surveyed are conservatives and 21 percent are liberal. It’s not surprising that Obama carried the swing states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin in 2008 when there were 11% more self-identified Democrats than Republicans. Now the margin is 2%.

Not surprising a Democratic Think Tank told USA Today in light of the declining number of Democrats, “It means that the votes that President Obama needs to cobble together are going to be made up more of independents than they were last time,” says Lanae Erickson of Third Way, which last week released a study tracking trends in voter registration in battleground states. “This time, it’s going to be much, much closer, and in a closer race those independents are going to put him over the top.”

·         But it’s not just these numbers that are trending against Obama. Democrats continue to suffer from the same “enthusiasm” gap that has been a noticeable part of Obama’s first administration. According to the poll less than half—47%–of Democrats are extremely or very enthusiastic about the presidential election, compared to 61% of Republicans. (And Republicans are paying more attention: 69% to 48%.)

USA Today’s Susan Page writes, “The contrasting conditions of the nation’s two major political parties — discouraged Democrats and resurgent Republicans — underscore how different Obama’s re-election campaign is from the contest four years ago.”

Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus tells Page,   “Enthusiasm is a tremendous benefit,” said in an interview. “We’re going to be able to mobilize a grass-roots army. It helps us recruit volunteers and run absentee-ballot programs. We can fill rooms with people making phone calls and going door-to-door.”  In addition, “He says enthusiasm has shifted to the GOP because voters who were inclined to favor Obama in 2008 now see him as ‘a fraud.’”

Again, as I say each time I update you, we must think longer-term. If we hadn’t already seen enough to know that change is the name of the game, this election season more than ever, the drawn-out selection process for choosing a Republican presidential candidate could mean that the battle extends through the June 5 California primary! The good news is the pro-life candidate will be stronger for having been battle-tested.

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Categories: Polling