2008 Battleground Districts

The ltest Democracy Corps poll has good news for Democrats heading into 2008. In fairness, polling information by James Carville always favors Democrats.

In the battleground of the 70 most competitive congressional districts (35 Democratic and 35 Republican-held), the Democratic incumbents, including the big class of freshmen, have quickly moved into dramatic leads in the named congressional ballot (52 to 40 percent)2. Whatever is happening for Congress is not evident for the individual members whose named job approval is rising along with their vote advantage over the Republicans. (These battleground results are based on 1,451 interviews in a survey of 1,600 that will be completed tomorrow.)

In the 35 Republican battleground districts, the named Republicans trail their generic Democratic opponent by 5 points (49 to 44 percent). Republicans are almost in as much trouble as in 2006 in their top tier congressional races.

In a poll conducted for MoveOn across seven Republican-held U.S. Senate seats, the named U.S. Senators had a vote to re-elect of only 37 percent and were garnering only 44 percent of the vote against a generic challenger. The current battles are putting even more Republican Senators in jeopardy.

The overall image of the Democratic Party has fallen back from the honeymoon post-election period to essentially where it stood for the whole 2006 election period —and that has been stable since April. On the other hand, the Republicans have weakened in the current period since April to their lowest thermometer score in the past half century.

A growing percentage of the country, now 61 percent, want their member of Congress to vote to change President Bush’s direction on Iraq and start requiring a reduction of troops; just 35 percent want their member to not undermine the President. The margin for a Congressional mandate has grown from 16 to 26 points in the last month. The forces pushing voters to demand change are growing, not diminishing.

Other polling numbers have shown the Iraq war to be increasing unpopular. This will sink the party. Karl Rove has been attempting to downplay the war's unpopularity and site Republican corruption as the reason for to GOP's woes. Times are desperate when Rove will point out the K Street culture of corruption.