Now that the dust from Tuesday’s elections has begun to settle, the official word is in: Exit polls confirm that the Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey should not be seen as a referendum on Barack Obama’s utter mismanagement of the country in his altogether too long tenure as president. Exit polls, schmexit polls. The key difference between the election of 2008 and the elections of 2009 is the white, middle class suburbanites who would have an ‘(I)’ after their name if they were running for elective office. They voted for Obama in 2008. And they voted against him on Tuesday.
Yeah, that’s right — the “teabaggers.”I guess those protests were more than just a scattering of angry non-representative airheads after all.
The numbers are revealing. There was a 13-percent shift in support from Democrat to Republican in Virginia, and a 12-point shift in New Jersey. There was even an 8-percent shift in Pennsylvania’s 23rd Congressional District, which helped elect Obama in 2008.
The Democrat spin doctors are everywhere, explaining variously why these are state races and they don’t count (Axelrod), or why the really important race was the one in NY 23 (Pelosi), which should help pass health care reform. They are free to spin till their eyes bug out (which ship sailed long ago for the Speaker of the House). Nothing will change the fact that 2010 looms ominously for the Democrats. Obama isn’t on the ticket, which means it will be hard to get the voting-age children and blacks involved.
And then there’s those scary folks from the ‘burbs. However is the White House going to regain their favor between now and then?
Comments 29
You should know that NJ was mostly the utter unpopularity of Corzine.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:05 am
@ fuster:
You should know that every major poll but Rasmussen predicted Corzine would win (largely on the strength of the support of Obama).
November 5th, 2009 at 8:02 am
If exit polls can’t predict the results of elections, why should we take them seriously as sources of interpretation of the results?
November 5th, 2009 at 8:54 am
@ Peter Shalen:
Peter, I’m not saying they are invariably unreliable. I am saying that I believe they were this time, though I’m hard-pressed to explain why. Maybe it’s the way the question was worded. Or maybe it’s an inexplicable phenomenon I witnessed in my late mother-in-law, who felt that voting for a candidate who won was somehow a validation of her as a person. I know she would have probably voted for Obama and then would never have wanted to admit afterwards that she had erred. Maybe this a more widespread affliction that I realize.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Howard, I was trying to reinforce your point, not question it. It has been observed for a long time that exit polls have been giving incorrect predictions of the results that are announced several hours later. That means that, objectively, exit polls don’t mean much. And yet pundits want to take these flawed exit polls, which don’t even serve to predict how elections will come out, as a starting point for grand theories about why elections came out the way they did.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:14 am
@ Peter Shalen:
Peter, I wasn’t attempting to make a contrary point either. At least I don’t think so. This isn’t another one of those time warp things, is it? Man, you freaked me out last time.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Don’t you mean next time?
November 5th, 2009 at 9:20 am
@ Peter Shalen:
Hahahahaha!!!
November 5th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Peter – it all depends on what you’re using the poll for. If you’re trying to predict the horse race result in an election that is polling within or near the margin of error, that’s one thing. If you’re trying to get the overall shape of voter opinion, that’s another.
I happened to dip into a discussion among libs about why the Rasmussen polls are so evil, evil, evil. Many Dems believe, as a matter of faith or self-definition, that a poll of all the people, whether they vote or not, is more meaningful than the “narrow” group of self-selecting voters. From their point of view Raz is “biased.” From Raz’s point of view, he’s polling what he’s polling, and you can make of the information what you will.
I hasten to add that I’m much more interested in the will of people who actually care and are relatively well-informed than of people who may never have voted in their lives and don’t know the names of their own Senators or Representatives.
That makes me an evil con, I guess.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:34 am
@ CK MacLeod:
Colin, you evil con, you!
Since I started playing amateur psychologist in this thread, I will continue by guessing that libs who claim not to like Rasmussen really don’t like this findings. It has their anointed leader looking much more vulnerable than he does in, say, the NBC poll.
As to your graf about well-informed voters, I have long felt they’re should be a voter competency test. Yes, I know, it’s VERY undemocratic and elitist. I still believe voters should have at least a passing understanding of the issues and people they are voting for.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:51 am
And I would point out that the Democratic votes to re-elect him existed, but that the people just wouldn’t get up and cast them.
No enthusiasm for the candidate is as likely an explanation as any.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:47 am
John Corzine is pretty much the same man he was when he won statewide elections previously for the governorship and before that for Senator. It’s the times that have changed.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:55 am
and a vote that isn’t cast is not a vote – does not “exist.”
November 5th, 2009 at 10:56 am
So PPP was horribly off in their sampling, they have a serious consistency problem. Most polls had Corzine and Christie much tighter, well within the margin of error. whereas Rasmussen
is consistent over time
November 5th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Feathers and foam, MacLeod. If they’re registered, they exist.
Corzine may be they same guy that they married, but he proved vastly unpopular.
There wasn’t all that much joy for Christie’s candidacy and yet he won with relative ease.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:02 am
@ fuster:
Yeesh, fuster, you back?
In any case, time will tell, won’t it?
November 5th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Feathers and foam?
If a voter don’t vote, s/he ain’t a voter. She has no “voice.” She hasn’t spoken. It’s not a question of semantics: It’s the true fact of the election that those votes did not come into existence in this election. It’s the job of a politician or a party or a movement to turn the registrant into a voter.
What’s odd is that you’re turning the fundamental failure of the Dems – their inability to turn out their voters in an ocean blue state – into some weird pseudo-proof of their continued ascendancy.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Not to mention a failure of governance into some weird proof of concept. It’s like some Republican trying to argue that the Party was just fine, it just had the wrong people in it in ‘08.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:20 am
@ CK MacLeod:
“weird pseudo-proof of their continued ascendancy” is an excellent line. fuster, you sure you don’t want to change that to your new screen name?
November 5th, 2009 at 11:24 am
@ CK MacLeod:
I didn’t think that I was arguing for ascendancy. The votes are in the middle and up for grabs.
Here’s something possibly worth your time.
http://www.gardenstatepol.com/?p=106
November 5th, 2009 at 11:55 am
A shining example of what the great conservative theorist Georg Lukacs, in his seminal volume of Republican thought HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS, defined as “bourgeois science.” If you ignore the context, individual events – or epiphenomena of the larger phenomenon – appear unrelated.
The “health care debate,” the bailouts and how they have been conducted, implemented, and defended, high taxes and corruption, and the elevation of political creatures like John Corzine are all epiphenomena of, ahem, financialized neo-liberalism – whose current incarnation is Obamaism. Chris Christie is no conservative revolutionary, but his ability to win election against an incumbent blue state Dem is symptomatic of the exhaustion of Obamaism – among other things.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Come to think of it, it’s hard to conceive of a purer political expression of “financialized neo-liberalism” than John Corzine and his failed re-election campaign.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
@ fuster:
Your bias is showing, Mr. Middle of the Road. That’s a very official looking document you dredged up there.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
@ Howard Portnoy:I found it one of them there newspapers, Howard. The one what has good sports coverage.
You want I should go burn down the office?
November 5th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
@ fuster:
What newspaper, buddy? The New Jersey Piece o’ Crap?
November 5th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
The pile of crap with the largest circulation in New Jersey.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
@ fuster:
So I was right. It is the New Jersey Piece o’ Crap
November 5th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Corzine was defeated in New Jersey for three reasons: 1) NJ has the highest taxes in the country and Corzine had actually raised them again; 2) NJ has a horrible problem with political corruption and Corzine was seen as tolerant of it, if not involved in it; and 3) He had had a net unfavorable rating for well over a year.
It’s true that Obama showed up to try and get a few more thousand people to the polls. It didn’t work. But Bill Clinton also showed up. So is the lack of votes for Corzine also a referendum on Bill Clinton? Or is the more likely answer that this election was almost entirely a local one?
Sometimes a cigar is a cigar.
November 7th, 2009 at 6:28 am
@ Thurman Hart:
Thurman, that’s a good try but no sale. (Or maybe I should no cigar.) Bill Clinton damaged himself by going one-on-one with the anointed one during the election, making his coattails shorter than they once were.
But the really conclusive proof will come next November. If NJ was a one-off deal that had nothing to do with Obama and he’s still “the man” among Dems and independents, then the midterms should break for the Dems. If on the other hand, independents have wised up, as I maintain, then 2010 should be a bloodbath for Democrats.
November 7th, 2009 at 7:15 am
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