TDS co-editor Ruy Teixeira, one of the top experts on demographics and political opinion, has an important post up at The New Republic, “Why Obama’s Re-Election Hinges On the Hispanic Vote.” Teixeira, author of “Red, Blue, & Purple America: The Future of Election Demographics,” explains why a high turnout among Hispanic voters, while important, is not all that President Obama needs from this constituency for re-election:

…My estimates suggest that Obama needs to get at least 75 percent of the minority vote in 2012 to have a secure basis for re-election, given likely drop-off in his white support…Hispanics, the second largest component of the minority vote, could be more problematic for Obama. They lack the special tie to Obama that black voters have and they have historically been more variable in their support for Democratic candidates. Moreover, there is significant discontent about Obama’s failure to deliver on immigration reform and the high level of deportations that have taken place on his watch. Obama’s approval rating among Hispanics has been hovering around 50 percent for a number of months, an unimpressive rating among a group that was supposed to be one of his strengths.

At present, notes Teixeira, Obama has an impressive edge with Latino voters, despite the aforementioned concerns:

While Hispanics may not be completely delighted with Obama’s performance, though, they find him strongly preferable to his prospective GOP opponents…Hispanic support for Obama in 2012 may well replicate–or even exceed–the wide margin he received from these voters in 2008 (67-31). In a major survey by the Pew Hispanic Center–the gold standard for polling on Hispanics–Obama defeats Romney by 45 points (68-23), a margin 9 points greater than in 2008 (his margin is a little larger against other Republicans). The survey also finds the Democrats’ party identification advantage among Hispanics at 47 points (67-20), the greatest margin the Pew Hispanic Center has ever measured.

And the Republican frontrunner is helping Obama keep his edge:

…Romney has been aggressively conservative in an effort to outflank his more ideological opponents. He’s promised to veto the DREAM Act if it comes to his desk as president, opposes in-state college tuition for illegal immigrants, and rejects any path to citizenship for the undocumented. More generally, he has consistently sneered at any sign of softness among his primary opponents on these issues, raising the specter of an increasing flood of illegal immigrants coddled by the law and provided with benefits they don’t deserve.

Teixeira sees bright prospects for the President if he can secure the strong support of Hispanic voters:

If Hispanic support for the President winds up as strong as it now appears and their turnout holds up–giving Obama at least 75 percent of what should be around 28 percent of the entire vote–the benefits to the Obama campaign would be huge. Crucially, it would give him considerable leeway to lose white support but still win the popular vote. In fact, my estimates indicate that Obama, with this level of minority support, could do just as badly as John Kerry did with the white working class (a 23 point deficit) and white college graduates (an 11 point deficit) and still defeat his opponent. The current level of Hispanic support for the President even suggests that he might come close to matching his 80-percent overall support from minority voters in 2008. If that occurs, he has even more leeway to lose white votes. Amazingly, he could approach the levels at which Congressional Democrats lost these two groups in 2010 (30 points and 19 points, respectively) and still win the popular vote.

As Teixeira points out, however, electoral votes are a little trickier. But Latino strength in “the new swing states of the Southwest–Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico” give Obama a significant edge:

…In these three states, Hispanics dominate the minority vote, which averages 36 percent of voters…If Obama does manage to hold them in addition to the five “easiest” Midwest/Rust Belt states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa), he would likely be only be two electoral votes short of victory, even without Ohio or any of the New South states (Florida, North Carolina, Virginia).

Teixeira concludes that “The prospects simply look too good for Hispanic support for Obama,” adding that “…Republicans have sacrificed more than they anticipated by ratcheting up the anti-immigrant rhetoric during the primary season; they may have sacrificed the election.”

Overview
This first Democracy Corps national survey of the New Year shows Republicans at risk at every level.[1] On the ballot, Republicans are in serious danger. For the first time since the 2010 election, Democrats have taken the lead in the congressional vote and this poll shows that third-party defections on the Presidential ballot could prove devastating for the Republicans. The intensity gap has shifted in the Democrats’ favor and Democrats have moved closer to parity on the economy, reaching their highest level of trust since October 2010.
Voters are watching
More than half of all voters (53 percent) say that the more they watch the Republicans in Congress, the less they like what the Republicans have to offer; only 39 percent say they like it more – a 14 point margin. The country is equally repelled by the Republican presidential contest (53 to 38 percent). The style of their politics and governance is driving away independents. And more than half of white non-college voters who were key to Republicans wins in 2010[2] do not like what the Republicans in Congress are offering–a staggering result.
Republicans in Congress lead race to the bottom
John Boehner and the Republicans in Congress are leading the crash.
◦For the first time in two years, Democrats are winning the Congressional ballot (48 to 45 percent), the result of a major shift among independents. Democrats are now winning independents by 6 points – a net 13-point shift among independents since October and a net 23-point shift since August. In June, Democrats were losing independent men by a margin of 29 points. Democrats are now winning this demographic by two points. In 2010, Democrats lost seniors by a 23-point margin. That gap has closed to just 10 points.
◦John Boehner’s favorability has fallen off significantly–43 percent now give the Speaker a negative rating, with three in 10 voters giving him a very negative rating (under 25 on our 100-point scale).
◦Two-thirds of all voters now say they disapprove of this Republican Congress and its approval rating has hit a new low in our tracking–25 percent. The decline has come from a complete drop-off of those who “strongly approve” of this Republican Congress–down to 8 percent, also the lowest in our tracking.
◦The Republicans have lost their advantage on the economy. Democrats now trail Republicans on which party would do a better job on the economy by only two points, a net 5-point shift since October. While most improvements in this poll are due to Republicans faltering, here Democrats have gained 5 points on trust to handle the economy.
The Presidential Contest Full of Peril
The race for president remains very close, though showing the first signs of improvement for the president. With his approval rating at 44 percent and vote at 48 percent, you have a close contest. But Obama’s strong support is up 4 points, has more winnable voters than Romney and has made some important recent gains with key swing groups. Obama is now winning 39 percent of white-non college voters, his highest total among that group in a year. Among independents, Obama now wins by two points –a net 10-point increase since October and an astonishing 18-point increase since August.
Romney is not popular – only 30 percent of all voters, and only 26 percent of independents, give him a warm, favorable rating. Obama, on the other hand, remains personally popular, with nearly 50 percent giving him a warm, favorable rating. As a result, Mitt Romney has not been able to energize voters. Voters, especially Republicans, are ready to bolt to independent candidates in large numbers — indeed, remarkable numbers.
Our poll shows that as a third-party candidate, Ron Paul would take 19 percent of the vote in a matchup against Obama and Romney. Almost all of this comes at Romney’s expense. Nearly tied in a head-to-head matchup against the President, Romney’s vote plummets when Paul is added to the ballot, losing 13 points of his vote share.
We also tested matchups between Obama, Romney, and three independent candidates: Ron Paul, Donald Trump, and Michael Bloomberg. Together, these three take 24 percent of the vote. While Romney’s support drops off in the face of a third-party challenge, Obama remains strong at 42 percent (10 points ahead of Romney). Thirty-two percent of Romney voters in the two-way matchup defect to one of the three independent candidates; only 12 percent of Obama voters defect.
These independent candidates have traction in key subgroups – 30 percent of white non-college and 35 percent of suburban voters chose one of the three independent candidates in this 5-way matchup.
Intensity Gap
We have seen a major change on intensity. Obama and Romney have equal numbers of strong supporters — with strong support for the President up 4 points since October. Conversely, strong support for Romney among white non-college voters has decreased 5 points since October. Additionally, there is growing opposition to Republicans – strong disapproval of the Republican Congress is now 9 points higher than strong disapproval of President Obama.

Harold Meyerson’s WaPo op-ed, “Obama vs. Romney: Who will blue-collar Americans hate less?” raises what may prove to be the most important strategic consideration of 2012. Meyerson sees both Romney and Obama hobbled with elitist images that will be very difficult for either candidate to shake:

…A Romney-Obama contest would pit the very personification of the two elites that generations of Americans have been brought up to loathe: the paper-shuffling, unfeeling banker, utterly out of touch with most Americans’ concerns, and who comes from inherited wealth to boot; and the cool, academic social engineer who is culturally estranged from the white working class and isn’t opposed to governments helping racial minorities.

Meyerson limns Romney’s image with devastating accuracy

Romney is the model of everything in modern American capitalism that makes people pine for the kinder, gentler capitalism that his father personified. As the head of American Motors, George Romney, Mitt’s pop, made cars. Mitt makes deals. As Michael Tomasky noted this week, George Romney refused a bonus of $100,000 after American Motors had a good year in 1960, saying that no top executive needed to make more than his $225,000 annual salary ($1.4 million today). Romney the lesser has a fortune estimated in the hundreds of millions for his work in private equity, extracting vast amounts of money from the firms — successful and not — that Bain Capital took over. The younger gets all manner of tax breaks that his father never could, apparently availing himself of the special rate for private equity and hedge fund managers that, he admits, has brought his rate down to around 15 percent.
Worse yet, Romney comes off as a walking, talking compendium of upper-class cluelessness. His offer of a $10,000 bet to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, his dismissal of his yearly speaker fees (around $370,000) as pocket money, his equation of corporations and people — these and other off-the-gold-cufflink comments depict a guy whose points of intersection with the lives of most Americans are few and far between. A rich kid who became a bean counter: Could anything be worse?

But Obama’s image in blue collar America is also problematic:

In the demonology of the American right, however, there surely is something worse: a liberal, cultural elitist who sees — from the ivory tower — the mission of government as catering to (lazy) minorities…Barack Obama seems sent by central casting to embody the target of neo-classic, racist right populism. Think of George Wallace’s attacks on not only minorities but also on their enablers — “pointy-head bureaucrats,” professors and elitist journalists…who had no understanding of or sympathy for the white working class…
In his own way, Obama has as little of the common touch as Romney. In the faux populism of the right, his lack of affinity for certain blue-collar pleasures (He can’t bowl! He doesn’t hunt!), his concern for climate change and other supposed abstractions, are all depicted as signs of contempt for blue-collar lives. Add Rick Santorum’s attack on Obama’s remark that it would be a good thing if every American went to college — a comment, Santorum said, that reeked of hubris and elitism by denigrating workers — to Gingrich’s labeling of Obama as the food-stamp president, and it’s abundantly apparent how the right will go after Obama this fall.

Meyerson notes that “The white working class may be a shrinking segment of the American electorate, but it’s still massive ‘ and “…these voters have moved steadily into the Republican column.” On a more optimistic note, Meyerson observes, “But with Romney as Obama’s opponent, the surge of blue-collar whites into Republican ranks may be smaller this year than GOP strategists have anticipated.” Meyerson concludes that 2012 seems ripe for a third party challenge “on the populist right,” more likely a Gingrich or Santorum than Paul.
Dems can hope that Meyerson has overstated the problems with Obama’s image among white blue collar voters. But the wise course would be to work on improving it.

This article by Democratic political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The last few weeks of the Republican Presidential road show has been dominated by discussion of Mitt Romney’s career as head of a Wall Street private equity firm — Bain Capital. Most people who enter politics have some previous career in the private sector — especially if they’re wealthy.
But Mitt Romney’s career on Wall Street — which he apparently hoped would allow him to tout his credentials as a “job creator” — will instead weigh down his election hopes like a massive millstone. There are six reasons why:
1). First and most important, attacks on Romney’s history at Bain are not “attacks on free enterprise” — or being “anti-business.” They are important for what they communicate about Mitt Romney and his values and the contrast that it poses with President Obama.
Barack Obama – like Mitt Romney — earned a degree at Harvard — and all of the opportunities that afforded. But when he graduated from law school, Obama went to work helping workers in the shadow of closed -down steel mills. Romney made millions for himself closing down steel mills.
The point is not just that workers were laid off, or jobs were outsourced — though they were. The point is not whether some of the ventures Romney funded succeeded and others failed. The point is that the impact of Romney’s business activity on the lives of ordinary people was incidental to his one and only goal: making huge sums of money for himself and a small group of his partners and investors.
Romney’s idea of success was embodied in that picture from two decades ago, with Romney at the center, surrounded by a squadron of Wall Street sharpies with money coming out of their pockets, their mouths and ears.
The point of the Bain story is that Romney would do whatever he could legally do to make money for himself and his crew. The effect of his decisions on the lives of ordinary people — or even the businesses in which they invested — was simply irrelevant. If shifting jobs overseas would make him and his friends more money – fine. If Bain could make millions by loading up a business with debt and bleeding it of cash — that was fine too — even if it meant that the business itself was ultimately forced to close. If buying a business and chopping it up into parts for resale would make him more money — so be it.
Improving the lives of ordinary workers — or of local communities — was never his goal. His goal was to make millions and millions of dollars for himself — often at other people’s expense. Instead of viewing ordinary workers as human beings who were parts of a team, he viewed them as “factors of production” — assets to be used when they helped him make money — objects to be discarded when that would fatten his bottom line.
Americans want a President who understands and cares about ordinary people — that’s not the Mitt Romney of Bain Capital.
2). If you were the Republican Party, you couldn’t pick a worse time to nominate a candidate with a resume as one of Wall Street’s “Masters of the Universe.”

Read more…

Ruth Marcus’s Washington Post column “The real battle for the soul of America” clarifies the stakes involved in GOP’s bid to retake the white house:

Romney asserts that President Obama wants to “fundamentally transform America,” turning the country “into a European-style entitlement society.” In fact, Romney and his Republican presidential rivals have a far more radical transformation in mind. They envision a dramatically shrunken federal government and a dangerously unraveled social safety net.
Theirs is not the self-styled compassionate conservatism of a George W. Bush…Republicans have traditionally favored state over federal involvement, but the degree of proposed retrenchment during the current campaign is remarkable — and troubling.

Marcus quotes from one of Romney’s demogogic government-bashing statements to underscore the danger posed by his agenda:

“Well, what we don’t need is to have a federal government saying we’re going to solve all the problems of poverty across the entire country, because what it means to be poor in Massachusetts is different than Montana and Mississippi and other places in the country,” Romney said.
“And that’s why these programs, all these federal programs that are bundled to help people and make sure we have a safety net, need to be brought together and sent back to the states. And let states that are closest to the needs of their own people craft the programs that are able to deal with the needs of those folks.”

Then there is Romney’s simplistic critique of important federal programs, including “food stamps, housing vouchers, Medicaid, emergency heating assistance.”

“What unfortunately happens is, with all the multiplicity of federal programs, you have massive overhead with government bureaucrats in Washington administering all these programs. Very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them,” Romney added.

Marcus corrects:

Nice talking point, if it were true. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has demonstrated, the major programs for the poor are extraordinarily efficient, even taking into account state as well as federal administrative costs. In 2010, 96.2 percent of Medicaid spending went for care; 94.6 percent of food stamp spending went for food; and 90.9 percent of housing program dollars went to rental assistance for low-income tenants….the impact of their plans would be to shred the safety net. Making sure that doesn’t happen is the real battle for America’s soul.

Whether Romney’s problem is ignorance or dishonesty, it’s clear he won’t be bringing much “compassionate conservatism” to his presidential campaign.

The much-trumpeted ‘turnout gap’ favoring the GOP turns out to be more illusion than reality regarding key pro-Democratic constituencies, according to a new survey reported by Dean Debnam, CEO of Public Policy Polling (crosstabs here) :

The group of voters most excited about voting this year, tied with the Tea Party, is African Americans. The thought that black voters are going to stay home and let the country’s first black President lose for reelection because everything hasn’t gone perfect is wishful thinking on the part of Republicans. I will be surprised if there is any dropoff in turnout from African Americans this year.

As for another key Obama constituency, young voters, Debnam adds:

The group tied for the third most excited out of the 18 we looked at here? Young voters. And when you take a deeper look at the folks under 30 who say they’re ‘very excited’ about voting this fall, they support Obama by a 69-31 margin over a generic Republican opponent. Those folks are going to be out again this fall as well.

But Republicans do have an overall edge, though it’s not insurmountable, Debnam cautions:

There’s plenty of good news for Republicans on the enthusiasm front as well. Tea Partiers tie with African Americans for the highest level of enthusiasm. There are more Republicans (54%) who are ‘very excited’ about voting than Democrats (49%).

As Debnam concludes:

The desire to dump Obama may give GOP voters more of an incentive to get out to the polls than they had in 2008. But it’s kind of a given that Republicans come out and vote. Democratic constituencies tend to be the harder ones to engage and mobilize. But as much speculation as there’s been that they won’t be there for Obama this fall the way they were in 2008, our numbers disagree. If the GOP wins it’ll because they flipped independents and brought back out dormant 2008 voters, not because the Obama coalition stayed at home.

In other words, Republicans counting on a limp turnout of African Americans and young voters this year are very likely to be disappointed.

The following essay by Democratic political strategist Robert Creamer, is cross-posted from HuffPo.
To maximize their odds of reclaiming their hold on the White House, the Republican establishment believes they need two things:
• To nominate Mitt Romney;
• To effectively end the Republican nominating process as soon as possible.
Last night’s results from Iowa lower the odds they will get either.
In fact, what we saw in Iowa last night was the Republican base gagging on the Presidential candidate the Republican establishment is trying desperately to cram down their throats.
Romney – and Republican Super Pacs – spent millions of dollars trying to convince Republican caucus-goers that Romney should carry the Republican banner next fall. But in the end 75% said no. MSNBC’s Chis Matthews went so far as to argue that Romney is being rejected by the Republican electorate the way a body rejects foreign tissue.
In fact, most rank and file Republicans are so repulsed by Romney that they have test-driven virtually every possible alternative in the show room. Rick Santorum’s turn came just at the right time to catapult him into the position of the “anti-Romney” – giving him the right to carry the anybody-but-Romney banner in the battle ahead.
Here are the reasons why the Iowa results are such bad news for Republicans:
1). Sometimes when a candidate has a hard time winning the support of his base, the reasons actually make him more electable in a general election. That’s not true of Romney. The major factors weighing on his candidacy are just as toxic with persuadable General Election voters as they are with voters in the GOP primaries.
In interviews and focus groups, anti-Romney voters use words like “phony,” “fake,” “robotic,” “cold.” They think Romney has no core principles – that he will say anything to be elected – that he’s a flip-flopper. One Republican went so far as to say, “He’s Kerry without the medals.” That, of course, is an insult to Kerry – who has strong core principles – even though Karl Rove’s consistent attacks on his character gave a not-so-popular George Bush a second term in 2004.
And it doesn’t help – even with rank and file Republicans – that Romney is, in fact, the candidate of the Republican establishment – which, let us remember, is basically Wall Street and the CEO class. Romney is the poster boy for the 1%. He is the cold, calculating guy who made his fortune dismantling companies and laying off workers. He is a guy whose painted-on smile is set in concrete as he hands you your pink slip. Mitt Romney is about as empathetic as a rock.
2). The fact that one anti-Romney contender consolidated enough votes to fight him to a virtual tie in Iowa was a big blow to Romney’s chances for a quick victory. His forces had hoped to keep his opposition divided and appear as the obvious front runner even with 25% of the vote. Instead, Rick Santorum comes out of Iowa with the “big Mo.”
Santorum will carry that momentum into New Hampshire where he will begin to pick up the votes of the “also-rans.” Most Perry and Bachmann votes simply aren’t going to Romney. Since everyone thinks that Mitt is way ahead in his adopted home state of New Hampshire, Santorum is under no pressure to win. Romney is left competing with his own expectations – anything but a blowout will be considered a defeat.
If Santorum’s numbers materially improve from his pre-Iowa single digits – as they most certainly will – he will continue to carry that momentum into South Carolina where he should win handily. That’s particularly true if Perry officially drops out of the race and Bachmann continues to fade.
3). Gingrich as much as announced last night that he would be playing blocking back for Santorum. He will attack Romney viciously in the coming debates – while having nothing bad to say about his apparent rival for the “anti-Romney” mantel. A wounded Gingrich could be a great deal more dangerous to GOP prospects than frontrunner Gingrich was a few weeks ago.
4). Ron Paul has every incentive to continue his crusade to reshape America in Ayn Rand’s libertarian image. Paul probably hit his high water mark in Iowa, but he certainly has no reason to leave the race anytime soon and shows every inclination to continue to use his platform to promote “Austrian” economics and the gold standard. He has plenty of money and a solid core of activist support.
5). Much of Romney’s pitch to voters has been premised on his “electability” and “inevitability.” At the very least the “inevitability” argument is now gone.
Politics and momentum are often about self-fulfilling prophesies. The argument that “Romney is bound to be the nominee, so get with the program” is now toast – at least for the near term.
6). The new Republican delegate selection rules make it more likely that the nomination process will drag on for some time. Many states that used to have “winner take all” primaries now allocate delegates in proportion to the percentage of each candidate’s votes.
If Romney continues to top out at 25% or 30%– which nationally seems to be his ceiling – it’s hard for him to wrap up the nomination in the near future. You need 50% plus one of the delegates to seal the deal. If Paul and Santorum continue in the race – not to mention Gingrich – that isn’t going to happen any time soon. And if Santorum continues to surge, all bets are off.
7). From the Republican point of view, nothing good can come from a long, drawn-out nominating process.
His opponents will continue to pound Romney for being a phony flip-flopper – a charge that will devastate him in a General Election.
Romney will continue to tack to the right to compete for base voters. That will lead to more and more positions that disqualify him with big chunks of the electorate – like his recent statement that he would veto the DREAM act.
The DREAM Act is an iconic issue for Hispanics. According to a recent Pugh Poll, ninety-one percent of Hispanic voters support the DREAM act and 51% consider a immigration the most important issue facing their community. In a general election, Romney – or any other Republican – simply can’t win a majority of electoral votes without states with heavy Hispanic voting populations. Yet to win primary votes from Perry, Romney positioned himself as the most anti-immigration Republican candidates in recent American history.
Santorum has positions on reproductive rights that are way outside the American mainstream. Not only does he oppose abortion in virtually any circumstance, he wants to give states the right to ban contraception. That’s right, contraception – which is used at one time or another by 98% of American women. A long primary fight with Santorum will inevitably require Romney to tack in his direction on these issues as well.
8). Before it’s over, the Republican race will inevitably get more negative. Romney and his Super-Pacs used a fusillade of negative ads to stop Gingrich in Iowa. Presumably they will try to do the same to Santorum – and maybe even Paul. Santorum, with the help of his lead blocker Gingrich in the debates – will inevitably have to fight back.
In fact, the odds have just increased that the Republican nominating circus is about to become a vicious, no-holds-barred dog fight.
No, Wall Street’s “masters of the universe” and the other Republican poobahs cannot be pleased with the outcome of last night’s caucus in Iowa.
One thing is for sure, it’s not time to take down the GOP “Big Top.” This show will be in town for some time to come.

This item by Jonathan Bines, staff writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live appears in the Huffington Post
As we all know, 2011 was a difficult year in Washington — a year of gridlock, dysfunction and extremism. And, as we all also know, Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame. How do we know this? Because we have David Brooks, looking down upon the political scrum from his skybox high above midfield, to show us the symmetry lurking beneath the apparent chaos.
Call it Brooks’s Law of Political Equivalency: For any Republican/conservative/right-wing culpability, there is an equal and opposite Democratic/liberal/left-wing culpability: If the Republicans are beset by extremism and fanaticism, then the Democrats are beset by extremism and fanaticism. If the Republicans display intransigence, the Democrats display intransigence. If the Republicans are in thrall to a discredited economic theory, then the Democrats are in thrall to a discredited economic theory. If the Republicans exist in a media echo chamber, then the Democrats exist in a media echo chamber. And so on.
2011 offered a banner year for Brooks to expound his Law, and he did so brilliantly, as seen in the following 19 examples from this year’s columns:

The following overview of a survey of 1000 likely 2012 voters in 60 Republican battleground districts conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner 12/4-7 for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Fund, is cross-posted from democracycorps.com:
A new Democracy Corps/Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund (WVWVAF) survey shows incumbents in 60 Republican-held battleground districts badly out of touch with voters — especially with the Rising American Electorate (RAE). These voters–unmarried women, African Americans and Hispanics voters and youth–account for a majority of the nation’s voting eligible population (53 percent). They drove progressive victories in 2006 and 2008, delivering 69 percent of their vote to congressional Democrats in national surveys. Opportunities in 2012 for progressive candidates would be much broader if the RAE vote was consolidated and achieved those historic support levels.
Voters, including the RAE, believe Republicans are out-of-touch on taxes and the deficit and prefer a more cooperative approach to governance from the Republican majority, rather than a strategy of obstruction and delay.[1] As a result, this class of battleground Republican incumbents enters the election year from a position of profound weakness. Electorally, they are held under 50 percent in a named trial heat for Congress; less than 40 percent commit to reelecting their incumbent “because he/she is doing a good job and addressing issues that are important to us.”
Unlike the 2008 election where the RAE posted record turnout, the RAE in this survey seems unengaged and uninspired compared to other voters in this electorate. A serious push among these voters will further weaken the Republican hold on the battleground and call into question current conventional wisdom that the House majority is out of play in 2012.
Much of the challenge for Democrats is highlighting the contrast between the two parties. Voters in the RAE deliver higher support for President Obama and the Democrats than other voters; there is less differentiation in their support for Republicans. Notably, after voters hear balanced criticism of both sides, key segments of the RAE, most notably unmarried women, move to the Democrats.
The Out-of-Touch Majority
Republican incumbents in these battleground districts stand crosswise with voters on the core issues of this election, most notably, taxes, the deficit and, more broadly, their relationship with the Obama administration. This disconnect is amplified further among voters in the Rising American Electorate.
Real legislation has ground to a halt in Washington to the growing frustration of the country. A 60 percent majority of voters in these Republican-held districts want their incumbent “to try and work with President Obama to address the country’s problems,” this jumps to 66 percent among voters in the RAE. Just a third (34 percent; 27 percent in the RAE), want their Representative to block the President.
These House incumbents are woefully out-of-touch on the historic debate over taxes. A 57 percent majority wants “to vote for a Member of Congress who will ask the wealthiest to pay a greater share of taxes to address our problems and the deficit.” By nearly a 2:1 margin, RAE voters violate Republican orthodoxy and argue for higher taxes on the wealthy. (additional content here)

Writing at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, TDS Advisory Board member Alan I. Abramowitz lays into the theory that an “anti-incumbent mood could produce an historic triple flip in the 2012 elections with control of both houses of Congress and the presidency all changing hands,” resulting in the election of a Republican president, a Democratic House and a Republican Senate.
The theory is wedded to the ‘false equivalency’ meme, arguing that the public finds both parties equally at fault — sort of a generalized ‘anti-incumbency.’ Abramowitz doesn’t buy it:

OK, time to get back to reality. There has never been a triple flip election and there is not going to be one in 2012. Not only that, but despite the abysmal approval ratings that Congress has been receiving, 2012 will not be an anti-incumbent election. That’s because opinions about the performance of Congress and opinions about whether most congressional incumbents deserve to be reelected have little or no influence on the outcomes of congressional elections.
Political scientists have long recognized that Americans generally make a distinction between Congress as an institution and their own representatives in Congress. They usually rate their own representative (and their own senators) much more favorably than they rate Congress. The renowned congressional scholar Richard Fenno observed that incumbent members of Congress actively encourage this sort of thinking by regularly criticizing the performance of the institution in their own campaigns. As Fenno put it, members “run for Congress by running against Congress.”
This distinction between Congress as an institution and its individual members is alive and well today. For example, in the same Gallup Poll that found that only 20% of Americans feel that most members of Congress deserve to be reelected, 53% of the respondents felt that their own representative deserved to be reelected. And this percentage would undoubtedly have been even higher if respondents had been asked about their own representative by name.

Noting that “the reelection rates for House and Senate incumbents are generally quite high, averaging over 95% for House incumbents and over 80% for Senate incumbents in recent years,” Abramowitz adds that even 2010 was an “anti-Democratic election, not an anti-incumbent election.” it was a fairly typical ‘wave election’ in which “A large number of incumbents lose their seats but almost all of the defeated incumbents come from one party.” only 2 Republicans lost their seats in 2010, and in the ’06 mid-terms, another wave election in the opposite direction, no Dems lost seats. “Throw the bums out” is more partisan in practice, not an anti-incumbent sentiment.
Abramowitz presents historical data to back up his argument, and says that “Based on the historical record we can confidently predict that if a large number of incumbents lose their seats next November, it will be because 2012 is a wave election and that almost all of the defeated incumbents will come from the party on the losing side of the wave.” The most likely scenario, according to Abramowitz:

The fact that Republicans currently hold 242 House seats, the largest number that they have held in the past 60 years, suggests that Democrats are likely to make at least modest gains in 2012. On the other hand, the fact that 23 of the 33 Senate seats that are up for election in 2012 are currently held by Democrats almost guarantees that Republicans will pick up some seats in the upper chamber.
We also know that 2012 is a presidential election year so Republicans will not have the advantage they enjoyed in 2010 of being the opposition party in a midterm election. Beyond these basic facts, it is likely that the results of the 2012 House and Senate elections will depend on the outcome of the presidential election.

Under Abramowitz’s most optimistic (for Dems) scenario, “Even with the advantage of having only 10 of their own Senate seats at stake in 2012 vs. 23 Democratic seats, if Republicans lose 25 seats in the House, the minimum number required for Democrats to regain control of that chamber, the expected GOP seat gain in the Senate would be reduced to zero.”
In any case, concludes Abramowitz, “The chances of a double flip election, let alone a triple flip election next year can best be described as slim to none . . . and slim just left town.”