PrintSeptember 17, 2010
Conservative America Ready to Take Control
The day after Christine O'Donnell and the Tea Party won the Republican nomination for Joe Biden's old Senate seat in Delaware (triggering the wailing and caterwauling of professional Republicans), Battleground released its September 2010 poll. The timing is perfect.
Christine O'Donnell ran against both political parties, really, and that seems in perfect sync with the American people. Although this respected poll shows that Americans incline toward the Republican Party over the Democratic Party in the November election, consider the percentages of Americans who disapprove of the job each of these are doing: Congress (66% disapprove and 47% disapprove strongly), Democrats in Congress (57% disapprove and 43% disapprove strongly), Republicans in Congress (59% disapprove and 38% disapprove strongly), and President Obama (49% disapprove and 38% disapprove strongly).
A perusal of the responses to other questions in the Battleground Poll reveals a profound mistrust of all of Washington. President Obama remains personally liked by most Americans, but his policies are uniformly unpopular. Democrat leaders in Congress are viewed negatively by lopsided margins. Republican leaders are comparatively viewed better, but the key word is "comparatively." Americans have little faith in either party, in our current president or his predecessor, or in anything yet tried in Washington to serve our nation well. Republicans seem to be winning by default the support of most Americans in the November election, but neither party is seen as good at solving the problems we face.
That sounds like an America disconnected, muttering "A pox on both your houses!" No political leaders are seen as the Messiah. Obama's policies like the stimulus are very unpopular (54% of Americans feel the stimulus is not working, including 41% who believe that strongly; only 37% believe it is working, and only 15% believe that strongly). Sixty-three percent of Americans view our nation as headed in the wrong direction, and stunningly, 50% of Americans strongly believe our nation is headed in the wrong direction (28% believe we are headed in the right direction, and a paltry 13% believe that proposition strongly). So does this Battleground Poll show an electorate that is apathetic? No.
The American people are champing at the bit to cast their ballots in six weeks. What percentage of Americans is "extremely likely" to vote in the November 2010 midterm elections? A dizzying 67% of Americans told Battleground that they were "extremely likely" to vote. Another 24% of Americans told Battleground that they were "very likely" to vote in November. Question B of the poll allows voters four options: "extremely likely," "very likely," "somewhat likely," or "not very likely at all." This polling data would also dovetail with the high levels of voter turnouts in Republican primaries in state after state.
A review of Republican primary turnout in Delaware shows just how intensely voters feel about using their only weapon against bad government: their vote. The 55,000 who voted in the Republican primary in 2010 was a record by a country mile. In the presidential election year 2008, 27,000 voted in the Republican primary; 14,000 voted in the 2006 Republican primary; and 22,000 voted in the 2004 Republican primary. (There was no GOP primary in 2002 because there were no contested Republican nominations that year in Delaware.) Was this week's turnout because of the close race in 2010? No. In 2000, 27,000 Republicans voted in the gubernatorial primary, in which Burris defeated Lee by 50.1% of the vote to 49.9% of the vote.
So what is charging up these vast numbers of voters to turn out in Republican primaries across the nation? Those who have read Battleground Poll articles know the answer: Now, finally, conservatives are turning out at the polls, unfazed by the dire warnings of pundits and the smirking mocks of establishment operatives in media, in entertainment, and in education. Conservatives grasp the grave peril of our republic. Regardless of what Republican leaders want, these voters are capturing the Republican Party for conservatives.
These conservatives are an overwhelming majority of America. In responding to Question D3 of the latest Battleground Poll, which asks respondents to describe themselves ideologically, these are the responses: "very conservative," 22%; "somewhat conservative," 36%; "moderate," 6%; "somewhat liberal," 24%; "very liberal," 8%; and "refused/unknown," 4%. Fifty-eight percent of Americans describe themselves as "conservative," and when those who are "moderate" or "refused/unknown" are removed from the pool, conservatives outnumber liberals by 64% to 36%. Moreover, conservatives are much more likely to describe themselves as "very conservative" than liberals are to describe themselves as "very liberal."
This is not an aberration or even a reaction to Obama. As I have noted many times, all the Battleground Poll responses over the years have provided almost exactly the same result. Seven years ago, the same conservative supermajority was evident in Battleground Poll data. Not only is this data consistent in this bipartisan poll, which asks the same questions and which reveals the poll internals, but it is the most consistent answer over the years in the Battleground Poll.
Christine O'Donnell won because an angry, animated America wished her to win. She and the other unabashed conservatives who are winning Republican primaries in unusual places for conservatives like Delaware and New York are standard-bearers of a vast army. Sure of the goodness of their cause, seeking to represent Americans instead of pundits, politicians, and bureaucrats, and conscious of the great importance of this moment, Christine and Marco and Sharron and the rest are guiding our nation to a peaceful, but a very real, revolution: restoring to the sixty percent of us who have been left out of politics and government our rights as citizens and our power as voters.
Bruce Walker is the author of a new book: Poor Lenin's Almanac: Perverse Leftists Proverbs for Modern Life.
