Some Interesting Poll News

I tend to find polls confusing most of the time, especially since there is often a wide disparity between what the various polls claim to have found. Many of my friends are far more knowledgeable about which polls do what, how each is slanted, which ones can be trusted as really neutral, etc. I usually rely on my friends' interpretations.

I read about one poll today, however, that had some rather interesting findings. From the Sacramento Bee:

Democrats are within striking distance of taking control of the U.S. Senate on Election Day, a series of new polls for McClatchy Newspapers and MSNBC showed today.

Democratic Senate candidates are tied, have a slight edge or an outright lead in every one of 10 pivotal battleground states. No Democrat trails in those races; no Republican leads. Democrats must gain six seats to capture control of the 100-member Senate.

Democratic candidates have a strong chance to win all seven at-risk Republican Senate seats -- with their candidates tied in Virginia and Missouri, holding a slight edge in Ohio, Rhode Island and Tennessee, and leading in Montana and Pennsylvania.

Democrats are also in position to hold their three most vulnerable seats -- with a slight edge in New Jersey and leading in Maryland and Washington.

Take control of the Senate? Six months ago, that would have seemed impossible. That it is indeed possible made me wonder just what is actually going on. The article contains some fairly reasonable explanations.

...Democrats are faring well and Republicans are on the defensive for several reasons: dissatisfaction with President Bush, disapproval of the war in Iraq, anti-incumbent sentiment and some anxiety about the economy.

Aggravating those factors is the fact that several Republican strategies don't appear to be working well at this point:

• Voters who don't like Bush are taking it out on the Republican candidates, regardless of whether Republicans run from or with the president.

• Voters in all but one state rank Iraq as their top concern, above terrorism, despite Bush's campaign to link the unpopular war to the more broadly supported effort against terrorism.

• A majority of voters think the Iraq war is going badly. Those who think that support Democrats by solid margins.

• The fact that Democrats haven't spelled out clear alternatives on Iraq -- a main complaint from Republicans -- doesn't seem to matter.

Iraq: that appears to be the bottom line. It may also turn out that people are beginning to make the connections between the war in Iraq and the cost of gasoline and heating oil, between the billions being spent to prosecute this unholy war and the stultified economy for those of us who work rather than invest for a living, between the ill-feelings engendered by the war and the increasingly heated terrorist rhetoric. Although I couldn't find the dates the poll was taken, I'm reasonably certain that Bob Woodward's latest book and perhaps even the recently released NIE report may not have had any impact on the poll's results.

Here's the thing, though: taking back Congress is still too close to call realistically, and I think that's because so far the Democrats haven't really done anything but sit back and watch. Maybe now would be a good time to ratchet up their efforts by some active rather than passive campaigning. It certainly couldn't hurt.