#Democrats Scramble to Stave Off Midterm Disaster

It's gonna be a bloodbath.

From John Harwood, at NYT:

WASHINGTON — If it were only President Obama’s flagging poll numbers, the problem for Democrats of how to mobilize core supporters to vote this fall would be bad enough. Midterm elections for an unpopular president’s party are almost always bleak.

But it is not only that. The very structure of the 21st-century national Democratic coalition makes its November turnout predicament bad, perhaps historically so.

“There’s never been a worse coalition for the purpose of a midterm election,” said David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report. The ability of Democrats to counter the problem will help determine how politically difficult Mr. Obama’s last two years in the White House could become.

Turnout for American presidential elections (roughly six in 10 eligible voters in recent contests) is always higher than for midterm congressional elections (fewer than half). But the rate of falloff from one to the next varies for different groups of voters.

In 2012, exit polls showed, Mr. Obama won a second term by rolling up margins of 11 percentage points among women, 24 percentage points among voters ages 18 to 24, and 87 percentage points among blacks. Over the last four midterm elections, turnout by all three groups fell more from the previous presidential race than turnout by Republican-leaning men, whites and those over 65.

Young voters have abandoned the midterm electorate at more than twice the rate of seniors. Hispanics, who favored Mr. Obama by a margin of 44 percentage points, have voted at just two-thirds the rate of whites. Unmarried women, the source of the Democratic advantage with women, vote less often than their married counterparts.

“I’m worried this could be a disaster,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster...

Heh. Celinda Lake? She was in the news recently, at Scared Monkeys, "Leading Democratic Pollster Celinda Lake Says to Democrats, “Don’t Defend” Obamacare … Also Predicts “Huge Turnout Disadvantage” in 2014 for Dems."

They're going to be destroyed.

And back at NYT here.