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More evidence 2012 presidential contest will be a nail-biter

Aug 31, 2012

By Dave Andrusko

NRL News Today has run a series of stories on recent polling numbers. Conclusions? For starters, what we all knew: that pro-life Mitt Romney and pro-abortion President Barack Obama remain virtually deadlocked.

But more importantly–as discussed in “Major Changes in Favorability figures ominous trend for Democrats”—the bottom has fallen out of the Democratic Party’s favorability numbers (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2012/08/major-changes-in-favorability-figures-ominous-trend-for-democrats).

William Galston picks up on that development in an analysis that ran at The New Republic. If you are a Democrat, the headline is reason enough to get panicky: “New Evidence That 2008 Was a Major Aberration for Democrats.”  He starts, as we did, with the Gallup poll numbers released August 29. As compared to four years ago, Galston writes,

“Not that much has changed for Republicans since then. Today, their favorable rating stands at 44 percent, and unfavorable at 50. The big shift has come for Democrats, whose edge over Republicans has completely disappeared. Only 43 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of the Democratic Party (down 13 points), while 52 percent have an unfavorable view (up 13 points). The erosion has been especially severe among men (15 points), whites (17 points), voters 35 to 54 years old (17 points), and Independents (12 points). Only nonwhite voters are more favorably inclined toward the Democratic Party than they were four years ago. And while a successful convention can provide a boost, history suggests that any such improvement in public perceptions of a political party is likely to disappear by Election Day.”

A few days before Pew released an analysis consistent with Gallup. However, “Drilling down more deeply,” Galston writes, “Pew finds finer-grained trends.” They include that “among men with less than a BA, Republicans have turned a 6-point deficit into a 3-point edge; among less educated women, the Democratic advantage has been pared from 20 points to 8.”

In addition Pew noted that in 2008, Democrats plus Independents who lean Democratic constituted 51% of registered voters. That’s 12 points more than the 39% for Republicans plus Independents who leaned their way.

“But now, the 12-point Democratic edge of four years ago has shrunk to only 5 points, 48 to 43, statistically indistinguishable from the split in 2004,” Galston writes. “Among whites, the Republican edge has expanded from 2 points to 12; among white men, from 11 points to 22. While Democrats have lost ground in every age cohort, they still maintain an edge of 19 points among Millennials, down from 32 points in 2008.”

Galston looks at geographic trends before moving to “The breakdown by religion” which “tells an intriguing story.” Among evangelicals Republicans are doing even better than in 2008. “But they have turned an even split among white mainline Protestants into a 12-point advantage, and they have transformed an 8-point deficit among white Catholics into a 9-point edge,” Galston writes. “(This last statistic may help explain why the Romney-Ryan ticket is doing better than expected in the upper Midwest.)”

More on Monday. Have a great weekend.

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Categories: Polling