Republicans Facing Tough Year in 2008

A new poll from The Pew Research Center indicates that 2008 will be tough year for the GOP:

A year before the 2008 presidential election, most major national opinion trends decidedly favor the Democrats. Discontent with the state of the nation is markedly greater than it was four years ago. President Bush's approval rating has fallen from 50% to 30% over this period. And the Democrats' advantage over the Republicans on party affiliation is not only substantially greater than it was four years ago, but is the highest recorded during the past two decades.

The public continues to express more confidence in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party as being able to bring about needed change, to govern in an honest and ethical way and to manage the federal government. The Democratic Party's advantages on these traits are much wider than during the last presidential campaign. Moreover, they remain about as large as they were just prior to the 2006 midterm election, in spite of rising public discontent with the Democrat-led Congress.

The voters' issues agenda also appears to benefit the Democrats. Along with Iraq, the economy, health care and education rate as the most important issues for voters. Compared with the 2004 campaign, fewer voters now place great importance on the issues that have animated Republican political unity in recent years – including gay marriage, abortion and terrorism.

Looking to the presidential election itself, the political climate appears to be affecting the morale of those in both parties. Democrats are more positive and more enthused than are Republicans. Since the beginning of the year, Democrats have closely followed campaign news at consistently higher rates than have Republicans, and somewhat greater proportions of Democrats say they have given a lot of thought to the presidential candidates.

Republicans not only are less engaged in the campaign, but they also rate their party's presidential candidates more negatively than do Democrats. Nearly half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (46%) rate the Republican presidential candidates as only fair or poor; by comparison, just 28% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents give the Democratic presidential field comparably low ratings.

The poll also finds Hillary Clinton maintaining a large lead over Barack Obama nationally, 45%-24% among Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters. Clinton also leads Rudy Giuliani in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up, with a 51%-43% advantage.

Note though that the election's still a year away, and a lot can happen in the meantime. As William Kristol pointed out last week, the conventional wisdom on a Democratic presidential blowout next year could be wrong.

One factor likely to help the GOP is Iraq (as Kristol mentions). The surge has improved security in the country subsantially, and the public has become a bit less pessimistic on our chances of victory there. Indeed, good news on the war keeps coming, with today's Los Angeles Times reporting that the number of Iraqi civilian deaths dropped dramatically in October.

Additionally, campaigns matter, and should Hillary win the Democratic nomination, her "nuanced" flexibility on the issues (her flip-flopping) may provide a powerful issue for GOP attacks on her character and credibility.

That said, things are certainly not looking good for Republicans. USA Today also reports the results from a new survey finding dramatic discontent in the electorate:

One year before Election Day 2008, most Americans are dismayed by the country's direction, pessimistic about the Iraq war and anxious about the economy. Two of three disapprove of the job President Bush is doing. Nearly a year after Democrats took control of Congress, three of four Americans say it isn't achieving much, either.

In all, 72% of those surveyed in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Oct. 12-14 say they are dissatisfied with how things are going in the USA while just 26% are satisfied. Not since April have even one-third of Americans been happy with the country's course, the longest national funk in 15 years....

There's plenty of time for attitudes to change before the election, of course, but the current landscape is the sort that in the past has prompted political upheaval and third-party candidacies. The last time the national mood was so gloomy was in 1992, when the first President Bush was ousted from the White House and H. Ross Perot received the highest percentage of the vote of any third-party candidate in 80 years. Bill Clinton was elected amid economic angst.

Both polls augur well for Democratic prospects next year. As the Pew survey notes, Democratic partisans are more enthusiastic about their party's chances than are their Republican counterparts. The USA Today piece shows as well how political scientists are talking about 2008 in history-making terms: Next year might be "a lot like 1952", according to David Mayhew, a political scientist at Yale and author of Electoral Realignments.

Of course, that's the year Eisenhower took over the White House after twenty years of Democratic power. Republicans might find some consolation in the 1952 analogy, however. Nineteen fifty-two ended up being an abberation in an otherwise long period of Democratic Party dominance. Perhaps Republicans can take heart knowing that should they lose in 2008, history shows clear prospects for the defeated party's return to power within a decade.