Monday, September 12, 2005

Katrina And The Wave Of Backlash

I'm going to take some time here to read tea leaves. The winds of change seem to be blowing hard. I don't put much faith in generic party id polls, but I do put a good deal of faith in polls between actual candidates, especially if the poll is ran enough times to make tracking available.

The latest poll in the New Jersey gubernatorial race is surely casting a pall over the party that K Street has been over the past five years. Jon Corzine's lead over Doug Forrester has doubled to twenty points in the wake of Katrina. The real movement from before and after Katrina was among independents. Before Katrina, Forrester led among independents 35% to 29%. Now he trails 43% to 26% .

I've often said that there is a soft seven percent of the people in the middle that decide elections. They are mainly apolitical and vote on feel. Charisma is usually the deciding factor in how they vote. Right now I think they are feeling that the federal government, a republican led federal government, failed in its response to Katrina and they don't want a republican running their local, state, or federal government.

I can't say with any certainty whether or not this will remain the sentiment all the way to November of 2006. The soft seven are a fickle bunch with short memories. If it does we are going to see a massive reshaping of the House and Senate. Kathleen Blanco and Mary Landrieu will probably get taken out as well at some point because a quarter of a million Democratic leaning voter have been permanently displaced from Louisiana. Outside of that, things are looking up for the Democratic party.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poll this:
I've been driving for 2 days with my empty gas light on... trying to coast and prevent the inevitable trip to some blood sucking station... wish I knew which ones had profits directly or indirectly going to Bush/Cheney empires.

Phlip said...

Go to CITGO.