I thought the most interesting thing in this month's Civitas poll was that despite Bev Perdue's remarkable unpopularity Democrats still lead on the generic legislative ballot 43-33, a spread that if it played out in real life I think could even increase the party's majorities in the House and Senate.
I don't think folks are real thrilled with how things are going in Raleigh, but legislative Republicans still come off as too extreme and spend too much time and overheated rhetoric on opposing bills that are well within the mainstream of public opinion in the state. They have not presented themselves as a viable alternative for most voters.
Now if things are really bad for the President and Democrats nationally, the GOP in the state can probably say whatever it wants and do well at the polls in 2010. But there have been cycles that were bad for Democrats nationally- 2004 is the most recent example- where they still stayed in control of the legislature due to Republicans having bad candidate recruitment, bad campaigns, and a bad message.
15 months out it looks like that could happen again.
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2 comments:
Wow, what a stretch of an argument...
First, it's 43-34.
Second, that's a narrower margin than the registration advantage that Democrats hold.
Third, in previous months, when Perdue was MORE popular, the generic ballot was narrower. (3 pt margin in May). So trying to correlate Perdue to the generic ballot is off base.
Fourth, to see Perdue's toxicity, look at what happens when you say the tax plan is her idea versus the state legislature. The service tax proposal went from 34% support to 13% support when you say it is a Perdue idea.
Nice try at spin, Tom, but you're so wrong here it's amazing.
1) The crosstabs of the Perdue/McCrory reelect numbers say it's 43/33 so you've got different numbers in different places.
2) Um, NC politics 101 is that a lot of Democrats don't vote Democratic. Republicans need to to get a majority of legislative votes, not slightly outperform their registration disadvantage.
3) Republicans in the state, maybe not you, have been claiming Perdue's unpopularity is going to give them the legislature back so it's very relevant to speak to whether that's actually true or not.
4) I don't disagree Perdue's unpopular, the point of this post is whether that's going to cause Dems to lose legislative control. Right now the answer is no.
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