Gallup is reporting that fully 32% of voters are looking forward to the midterm election as a chance to send a message of disapproval to President Obama and the powers in Washington, DC.
According to Gallup, that number exceeds a high of 19% going into the 1998 midterm elections during which President Bill Clinton was embroiled in his White House sex scandal and the high set by President Bush in 2008 during the apex of the Iraq War.
As one might expect, the bulk of that number is made up of discontented Republicans. Gallup explains:
“A majority of Republican registered voters, 58 percent, say they will be sending a message of opposition to Obama with their vote this fall. In contrast, 38 percent of Democratic voters say they will support the president. Rather than supporting Obama, most Democrats, 53 percent, say they will not be sending a message with their vote.”
This and other trends has seasoned analyst Chris Cillizza, writing in The Washington Post, wondering whether this midterm election is 2006 all over again. In that cycle, the tables were turned. Republicans controlled the Senate and an unpopular Republican President cast a shadow for those of his own party on the ballot.
Cillizza points out the message from the Democrat Party then was not too dissimilar from what Republicans are preaching now, “Don’t like President Bush? Send him a message by voting against the person who has voted with him [fill-in-the-blank-but-it’s-a-lot percentage] of the time.”
As polls continue to be released showing Republicans surging, or holding steady at worst, the loss of more and more states to the “leaning-Republican” column is following the same pattern set by Democrats in the final weeks before the 2006 November elections.
