Unlikely Voter

Since Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Senate had a big uproar over unions of government employees, and that uproar has spread to states like Ohio, there’s been a great deal of issue polling on unions and collective bargaining. I tend to ignore all of it, just as I ignore most issue polling. I’ve gotten comments that this is a failure of the site in fact, that I don’t hit these things more.

I have a standard answer for why I tend to ignore issue polling, though: the results are volatile and easily manipulated, either accidentally or intentionally.

National Journal noticed an event in the Gallup voter enthusiasm polling: Republicans have gone off the scale, while Democrats have fallen far off from 2006.

Since 1994 the numbers have tracked with victory and defeat, with the party ahead in enthusiasm winning the House, but this scale is… well, just look.

According to an internal poll of Mick Mulvaney’s discovered by National Journal, the South Carolina Republican has gained 11 points on 14 term Democrat John Spratt of the 5th district.

If the Chairman of the Budget Committee can’t use his seniority to keep his seat safe, then I would expect to see a wave nationwide.

Research 2000 very much wants you to know that they do polls for newspapers in St. Louis, Lexington, Fort Wayne, South Bend, and Reno. They don’t want you to think of them primarily as doing polls for left-wing activist outlets Daily Kos and now Democracy for America, the group founded to continue the work of former Presidential candidate Howard Dean.

Someone should tell Daily Kos and Nate Silver this though, as they beat the wardrums against R2k competitor Rasmussen Reports, that R2k is trying to look less partisan, not more.