[repeated line] Forrest Gump: Stupid is as stupid does.

Weekly Tracking Poll: Democrats Win First Round of Town Hall War?

by Steve Singiser

Fri Aug 14, 2009 at 09:12:03 AM PDT

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 8/10-13/2009. All adults. MoE 2% (8/3-6/2009 results):

	FAVORABLE	UNFAVORABLE	NET CHANGE
PRESIDENT OBAMA	60 (60)	36 (37)	+1
PELOSI:	36 (35)	56 (57)	+2
REID:	34 (33)	55 (56)	+2
McCONNELL:	16 (17)	66 (66)	-1
BOEHNER:	11 (12)	66 (65)	-2
CONGRESSIONAL DEMS:	43 (42)	51 (52)	+2
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS:	10 (10)	76 (75)	-1
DEMOCRATIC PARTY:	45 (44)	48 (49)	+2
REPUBLICAN PARTY:	17 (18)	74 (73)	-2

Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.

As stated before, it is usually tough to offer conclusions based on weekly movements of one or two points. It becomes a little bit easier, however, when all of the representatives from one party move in one direction, while all of the representatives of the other party move in the opposite direction.

Given that the dominant story in the public conversation over the past week has been the health care townhall meetings, it is not completely unreasonable to suggest that the protest tactic employed by the opponents of reform (and at least tacitly cheered on by Congressional Republicans) has not had the desired effect of cratering Democratic numbers and resurrecting Republican ones.

Quite the opposite, this weeks shows a continuation of two trends apparent over the last month: a slow but palpable recovery in support for Congressional Democrats, and the perpetuation of a long slide in support for Congressional Republicans:

Looking ahead to 2010, we see that the Democrats maintain a lead of eight points on the Congressional Ballot Test (37-29).

The huge proportion of undecided voters stems from incredible ambivalence among Independents. These voters favor Democrats by the same margin as the sample at-large (eight points), but the story with Indies is how many of them refuse to pick a side:

Percentage of Undecided Voters, 2010 Generic Congressional Ballot Test

Democrats 19
Republicans 14
Independents 58

With so many Independent voters remaining steadfastly on the fence, it is worth examining what they think of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in this most recent incarnation of the tracker:

Favorability Ratings of Democrats and Republicans, 8/13/09 (Independent Voters)

Democrats 42/47
Republicans 5/85

Clearly, this subset of the electorate has a net negative opinion of Democrats, but Democrats are practically revered by Independents in comparison to the lack of support that this corps of voters has for the GOP at present.

This, of course, could be read two ways. Democrats should, without a doubt, have some pause about the fact that a group who so uniformly has disregard for the GOP remains on the fence vis-a-vis their vote preferences next year. However, it can also be read that the Democrats, over the next fifteen months, will have a more than fair opportunity to convert those undecided voters, who the data makes clear are not Republicans in nonpartisan clothing.