On left, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) sits to the right of the man who has taken his job, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Nearly half of likely voters say the Republican wave that swept through national races and down-ballot contests was more a repudiation of President Obama and the Democratic Party, than a vote for Republicans.
A new survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports found that 30 percent — a significant number, yet still a minority — believe last week’s election results were more about supporting the Republican Party and its candidates than a vote against the Democrats, while 49 percent disagreed, instead saying the election results were a vote against the Democrats.
However, over a fifth of voters asked — 21 percent — said they still aren’t sure.
Of course, despite their recent attempt to spin the numbers, Rasmussen Reports badly called the actual election. As we previously examined, Rasmussen’s polling results were bias in favor of Democrats between 8 and 9 points, on average. In presidential approval rating, the pollster has repeatedly shown a bias in favor of President Obama by roughly the same spread in post-2012 polling, though that has widened in the days following the election.
As of now, Obama’s job approval rating stands at negative 36/57 percent in the Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll, while Gallup has president Obama at a negative 39/56 percent. The PPD average of polls currently has Obama barely hovering over 40 percent, precisely because of Rasmussen’s survey results artificially propping the president up.
Rasmussen currently shows 47 percent of voters approve of the job President Obama is doing, while 52 percent disapprove.
To be fair, Rasmussen wasn’t the only pollster to swing and miss on Election Day. In fact, some pollster even underestimated the Republican wave more so than the former Republican-bias pollster. Larry Sabato, editor-in-chief of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, called for an investigation into the polling industry following the election.
“I want an investigation of the polls in Virginia. They were completely wrong just as they were in Georgia,” Sabato said on Fox & Friends. “They were also way off in Illinois. And I could go on and on. Boy is that an industry that needs some house cleaning.”
Still, it is certainly true that voters aren’t keen on either party, even if the pre-election narrative widely painted the Republicans in a less favorable light than the Democrats. In Fox News’s final pre-election survey, the Democratic Party had a net negative of 10 points in voter favorability — 42 percent favorable, 52 percent unfavorable — while the Republican Party was upside-down by 16 points — 38 percent favorable, 54 percent unfavorable.
However, the national exit poll showed a net negative of 12 points in favorability for each party. But, according to analyst Charlie Cook, despite the victories across the board, election night brought both good and bad news for the GOP.
“The bad news being that even with this big win, Americans still do not like the GOP,” Cook said. “The good news for Republicans, this time around, is that this election was not about you.”
I couldn’t agree with that assessment more.
