Public Opinion Strategies

For quite some time, Republican pollsters have been making the point to their clients: don’t confuse the attitudes of base and swing voters toward the President.  Base GOP voters do not like Obama’s policies, and  they dislike him personally (some more vehemently than others).  However, we had consistently seen in our polls and focus groups that [...] Read more

 
This post was written by Glen Bolger and Dave Wilson.
 
Over the past five mid-terms, there have been more wave elections (1994, 2006, 2010) than elections with limited swing (1998, 2002). We thought it would be enlightening to look at the national House exit polls from those three wave elections for similarities and differences.
 
The 2010 national [...] Read more

By now, nearly everyone knows the national political environment is problematic for Democrats this election cycle. However, an in-depth survey of key swing congressional districts underscores that the opportunities Republicans have to make significant gains in November are even more widespread than conventional wisdom holds.
The survey was conducted for National Public Radio by Greenberg Quinlan [...] Read more

A key to understanding the mindset of Independent voters is to compare their views on the right direction/wrong track with the views of Republicans and Democrats.  Independents are always somewhere in between the two partisan groups — but the key is which partisan group are Independents closer to at any point in time – which I’ve [...] Read more

Faithful readers know that I am obsessed with Independents and swing voters.  I have been ever since I worked at the NRCC and we lost an “unloseable” (is that a word?) special election in Indiana’s old 4th CD — a seat that had been held by Dan Coats and Dan Quayle.  
Evidence that history repeats itself [...] Read more