Rasmussen Reports is out with a new poll showing JD Hayworth gaining significant ground on John McCain.  Rasmussen finds a mere 7 point lead (48%-41%) for McCain.  In January, Rasmussen had McCain ahead by 22 points (53%-31%), so this new poll represents a 15 point swing in Hayworth’s favor.  More troubling for McCain is that he is under 50 percent - generally considered a sign of an incumbent in trouble. 

What makes this result even more impressive is that the poll was conducted in the immediate aftermath of a bad week for the Hayworth campaign (its campaign consultant left and an attempted cheeky comment about gay marriage went horribly wrong) and over $1 million on negative advertising by the McCain campaign.  All in all, this has to be very encouraging for the Hayworth campaign and shows that McCain is beatable.

I missed this when it came out last week, not that anybody was waiting for this with bated breath. Short version: eight for ten, and the Democrats made up a good bit of lost ground more or less across the board.

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ObamaCare is not popular.  The people don’t want it.  The people have rejected it.  Yet President Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are going to ram it down the throats of the American people using a special Congressional procedure that avoids a filibuster in the Senate - The Health Care Nuclear Option.  The Obama Administration and Leaders in Congress have shown contempt for the opinions and views of the American people.  They just don’t get it and they don’t care what people think about this plan. 

Townhalls, Tea Parties, 9-12 demonstrations, ObamaCare low polling numbers and the election of Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) are all products of an unpopular health care idea by President Obama.  The Declaration of Independence states, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  Consent of the governed is an important concept, yet politicians in the Federal Government seem to believe that they can pass unpopular legislation and work to get the consent of the governed at some future date.  This is not how this democracy is supposed to work.  Members of Congress are supposed to be responsive to voters and the American public.  I truly believe that many Representatives and Senators believe that the American peoples only are allowed to participate in this democracy when they vote every other November.  This ObamaCare should not pass without the consent of the American people.

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I received a phone call identifying itself as coming from Rasmussen conducting an automated poll that focused on the California Senate race. First time I’ve received such a call from Rasmussen. (I thank RedState for informing me of their reputation or I might not have participated.)

After general job performance questions on Obama and on Arnold (one each), the poll had three head-to-head votes between Boxer and each of the three Republican candidates, followed by asking attitude towards each of the four individually (very favorable to very unfavorable). The poll also contained the expected demographic questions (political party, self-identification scale from very liberal to very conservative, age, income, ethnicity, sex) and a question as to voting frequency.

(I chose the Republican all three times in the head-to-head, but in the attitudes, Chuck got a very favorable; Carly got a somewhat unfavorable; Tom and Babs got a very unfavorable).

In the middle of the demographic questions, some interesting attitude questions appeared, if I recall correctly - business tax cuts vs. gov’t spending to help the economy, whether the Federal budget can be balanced without tax cuts, whether our elected officials have become a special interest group, whether I thought business and government were often in cahoots [my paraphrase]. The questions apparently were trying to gauge anti-government sentiment without pushing the hot buttons.

The question I struggled the most with, because it was too broad and vague, was whether I favored a “tax cut for all Americans” - to which I found myself reluctantly answering “no” because I don’t assess this as an effective approach: targeting cuts to businesses is what we need to improve our economy. Fortunately they followed that poor question with the question about cutting taxes on business vs. increasing government spending, where the choice was clear.

Overall, with the one exception above, the questions seemed well-designed to try define key voter attitudes that would impact voting and to correlate candidate support with these attitudes. I’m not sure whether my earlier answers affected the later attitude questions that were asked. That is, if (perish the thought!) I had identified myself as a Boxer supporter, I wonder whether the attitude questions would have differed - or whether the lead-ins would have differed.

Quite refreshing to be involved in a poll conducted by a reputable national company, as opposed to phony push polls or just bad design.

It will be interesting to see how the results come up - especially as to the Republican voter attitudes towards the three primary candidates and how DeVore is shaping up at this point in the trail blazed by Demon Sheep.

These I still see the point of putting up. It’s not like the USSC is about to rule to strike down restrictions… OK, that joke is simply not going to work this early in the (snowed-in) day. Short version: nine of ten, the Democrats managed to make up some of their deficit in the economy category (hey, that joke worked!), and I conclude that Government Ethics requires more in the way of prolonged scandals on the Democratic side in order to move public perceptions off of its current default.

More after the fold.

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But no doubt the administration just needs to explain the situation better to the American people.

No doubt.

While influential 20th Century economist John Maynard Keynes would say it’s best to increase deficit spending in tough economic times, only 11% of American adults agree and think the nation needs to increase its deficit spending at this time. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 70% disagree and say it would be better to cut the deficit.

In fact, 59% think Keynes had it backwards and that increasing the deficit at this time would hurt the economy rather than help.

To help the economy, most Americans (56%) believe that cutting the deficit is the way to go.

Hey! How about another speech? That might work.

Moe Lane

PS: This is a good excuse to post this.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The full report isn’t up yet, but these are the reported Rasmussen trust numbers for December. Short version: seven out of ten for the GOP, two ties, and the Democrats get to be more trusted on education.

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Trende, who writes the horse race blog at RealClearPolitics is among the best in country, and here is his take on various polling data from the MA Senate race:

Consider: PPP (D) has her at 47%. The Globe/UNH poll has her at 53%. Rasmussen has her at 50%. Even internal Democratic polling — which usually represents the Democrat’s best-case scenario — has her leading state Senator Scott Brown 50%-36%. In other words, most of the variance comes from Brown’s numbers — which vary between 36% and 48% support — not Coakley’s. As I’ve noted before, when you see one candidate very stable and one candidate with a high degree of variance in their numbers, it means that the undecideds are trending toward the candidate with the higher variance. In other words, that candidate will tend to be toward the high end of their polling range.

This is where the “undecided rule” starts to come into play. It’s a political science rule that predicts that undecided voters will break heavily for the challenger.”

Sean Trende also discusses the new-internet age “undecided rule,” and up-dates it. Here is his bottom line:

“So if we look for a principle that survives this new age of saturation advertising and internet-driven intensity, we might say that when you have two well-known candidates, the undecided rule is probably inapplicable as a predictive device. But if there’s a disparity between the candidates, the undecideds will still tend to break toward the lesser-known candidate. There’s probably caveats and exceptions here, but I think that’s probably about right.

“So what does that tell us about the Massachusetts Senate race? We have a sitting Attorney General who came out of a contested primary, going up against a more-or-less completely unknown state Senator. She’s struggling to get above 50%. All of this points toward a very close final race — potentially much closer than a week ago when I guessed at a 54-46 spread. Again, this is also consistent with what we’re seeing in the variance in the Coakley/Brown numbers. Coakley should be worried.”

The Dems keep thinking that the health care jihad has no consequences. How wrong their jihadists in chiefs: Pelosi, Reid and Obama are.

According to Rasmussen 75% of Republicans say that the Republicans in Congress have lost touch with their voters NOT a shocker .

“A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Republicans voters still believe Republicans in Congress have lost touch with GOP voters throughout the nation over the past several years. Just 21% of GOP voters think their legislators have done a good job representing party values.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of GOP voters say the average Republican congressman is more liberal than they are, while 23% say their views are about the same. Just 20% believe the average GOP representative in Congress is more conservative than the average Republican voter. ”

The 20% who think that the Representatives in Congress are MORE Conservative in the above commentary are most obviously the same people who call themselves Republicans instead of Conservatives. I don’t understand how those 20% keep DESTROYING our party and why WE allow them to. Is it that those 20% are the most narcissistic? and like sheep WE are drawn to the biggest braying mouth? There must be an answer because WE keep doing it over and over again. Michael Steele talked about 12 Steps to Recovery Some of them might work who knows with Michael Steele however it is not necessarily his 12 steps but there is definitely RECOVERY needed in the base of the Republican Party. Like addicts WE have allowed these idiots to betray us and walk over us and degrade us and kept coming back for more.

This year should just be your standard 20-30 seat turnover in the House but We The People have decided it is going to be a BLOWOUT. The Republican Party is the natural beneficiary of this goodwill however when those who vote Republican think you are more LIBERAL then they are well it it not necessarily those who have the office now who will benefit. The Conservatives who are running and CHALLENGING Republicans in the primaries are going to be the beneficiaries.

How did WE get to this moment? Republicans came into power for the 1st time in decades in 1994 with much goodwill and every opportunity to be DIFFERENT…..they BLEW IT! The next decade saw times of more opportunities and more goodwill and more TRUST and what did they do? they BLEW IT! This time it’s going to be different. There is not going to be a Republican Revolution in 2010 there is going to be a Conservative Revolution in 2010. The difference is the LIBERAL Republicans will NOT have the power because they will be outnumbered by Conservatives. I strongly encourage everyone to find that Conservative candidate in your neck of the woods and get to work helping them to WIN. That might encompass a primary first where they will have to DESTROY the person already with an R behind their name and then against the D or as in my case in VA-11 a straight up run against a LEFTIST.

It is our DUTY as citizen’s of the best country on the entire planet to ensure that for the 1st time in American history the House of Representative is a collection of Conservative SMALL GOVERNMENT politicians and NOT a bunch of liberal, spread the wealth, psychic vampires who live to drain the life’s blood out of it’s citizens. WE have no choice because our country is BROKE! It needs to be put back together and the only way WE can do something about it is by going to the ballot box. If the House has just a bunch of Republicans the like of the one’s prior it will NEVER CHANGE. They too like to be progressive and think that government is the answer but they want to create different programs to spend our money then Democrats. WE need those who KNOW that the government is the PROBLEM and needs to get out of the way of Americans who prove time and again their resiliency.

2010 Principles before Party~

This is not the most important passage from the article, though:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% of voters nationwide believe the $787-billion economic stimulus plan has helped the economy. However, 38% believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy. This is the first time since the legislation passed that a plurality has held a negative view of its impact.

This is:

The Political Class has a much different view than the rest of the county. Ninety percent (90%) of the Political Class believes the stimulus plan helped the economy and not a single Political Class respondent says it has hurt. (See more on the Political Class).

If you’re wondering why the Democratic party’s leadership seems so determined to keep marching over the cliff: well, there you go.  On the other hand, Rasmussen’s ‘Political Class’ designation is subject to criticism and controversy.  On the gripping hand, that criticism and controversy is usually from people who either don’t want to be identified as elites, or resent not being identified as populists…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.