This past week, in Washington and around the country, Republican activists have been having a collective anxiety attack. \u00a0Everywhere you go, you hear doubts that no likely candidate has what it takes to beat Mr. Obama. \u00a0Following are two ways \u2013 polls and electoral votes — of assessing this worry.<\/p>\n
Polls This past week I asked Conway to tell me something about the groups that shifted from Democrat to Republican between 2008 and 2010 and what they might indicate for the 2012 presidential race. \u00a0I did not want a repetition of what we have all heard about Independent voters. \u00a0Could she turn the glass and refract the light in a different way?<\/p>\n Conway replied that four groups swung toward the GOP this past year: women, the working class (under <$50,000\/year in income), rural America, and Millennials (18-29 year olds).<\/p>\n The long-standing female voter preference for Democrats disappeared in 2010, she said. \u00a0The Democrats had won women by 12-14 percentage points in 2006 and 2008. \u00a0In 2010, the GOP all but tied them. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Women reacted with revulsion to the bailouts, the stimulus, and the healthcare overhaul.<\/p>\n While unmarried women remained a GOP problem, they moved from about 70 percent Democratic to 60 percent between the last two elections. \u00a0\u00a0When asked last year about what they were \u201cmost upset about \u2026 in Washington,\u201d unmarried female voters replied: too much party bickering (55%), too much spending, taxes, and deficits (32%), too much for the rich and Wall Street, not regular people (24%), too liberal (21%).<\/p>\n Conway said that we see similar shifts among the other groups she fingered. \u00a0The GOP won the white working class in 2008 by ten points, in 2010 by 30. \u00a0Rural America went from a 2008 Obama-McCain tie to a 2010 61%-36% GOP win. \u00a0And among Millennials the Republican share grew from 32 percent for McCain to 42 percent for GOP candidates last year.<\/p>\n It is hard not to conclude from all these numbers that if the GOP remains the party of serious spending cuts, it will win big in 2012. \u00a0Democratic appeals for saving this or that program \u2013 like Harry Reid\u2019s recent defense of federal dollars for Cowboy poetry festivals \u2013 are likely to make things worse for the Dems, not better.<\/p>\n But the GOP still has plenty of room for overplaying its hand. \u00a0Becoming the party of partisan bickering is one way. Allowing cuts in spending and taxes to be positioned not as helping all of us (essential for restoring the economy and the government\u2019s financial health) is another. \u00a0Still, looking at these numbers today, you\u2019d rather be a Republican than a Democrat.<\/p>\n Electoral Votes Whalen starts with the 2008 totals in the Electoral College: 365, Obama-Biden; 173 McCain-Palin. After post-census shifts, those numbers become 359-179.<\/p>\n Then he assumes that, like horses returning to their barn, Virginia and North Carolina go back into the GOP column \u2013 337-201.<\/p>\n He also assumes that Daniels (or another Midwestern governor) would carry Ohio and Indiana, both 2008 GOP losses \u2013 306-232.<\/p>\n Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico have big Hispanic populations. \u00a0He believes putting Rubio on the ticket would be enough to pull them over \u2013 292-246.<\/p>\n And of course Rubio brings Florida: 265-273, Republicans win.<\/p>\n Looks good for the GOP, huh? \u00a0Yes, but\u2026. \u00a0If I were on Team Obama, I\u2019d see Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada as my firewall. \u00a0As Conway pointed out, minority voters are not moving the way of other segments. \u00a0So with this scenario, for the first time since 2000, the axis on which the presidential election turns could move west in 2012, from the Eastern Line (linking Ohio and Florida) to the Western Triangle (Nevada-Colorado-New Mexico).<\/p>\n In other words, as of today, Republicans have good reason for both optimism and anxiety. What\u2019s the prognosis for 2012? It\u2019s going to be a hard race, for both sides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This past week, in Washington and around the country, Republican activists have been having a collective anxiety attack. \u00a0Everywhere you go, you hear doubts that no likely candidate has what it takes to beat Mr. Obama. \u00a0Following are two ways \u2013 polls and electoral votes — of assessing this worry. Polls Nearly as I can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-commentary-general","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":857,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>Nearly as I can determine, pollster Kellyanne Conway was the first public opinion expert to spot alienation in a sizable segment of the 2004 Bush vote over the run-ups in federal spending. \u00a0I first heard her discuss the finding in June 2005. \u00a0This spending-driven swing came to define the 2006, 2008, and 2010 elections. \u00a0Yet it was more than a year after that 2005 lecture that I encountered any other opinion surveyor identifying the trend or its cause.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>On Friday, I received the following analysis from Hoover Institution fellow Peter Robinson, who got it from Bill Whalen, another Hoover fellow. \u00a0Whalen asked how would a Daniels-Rubio ticket in particular run against an Obama-Biden one (though any Midwestern GOP governor could take Daniels\u2019 place, particularly Ohio\u2019s John Kasich).<\/p>\n