Is the tide turning in the 2006 campaign?

Dick Morris: Polls Show GOP Tilt

The latest polls show a tilt to the Republicans, noted political strategist Dick Morris tells NewsMax exclusively.

Morris made the following observations late Sunday:

• The Republicans will lose the House.
• The Republicans will likely keep the Senate.
• The GOP now has a lock on Tennessee, and four other states remain in contention: Montana, Missouri, Virginia and Rhode Island. The Democrats have to win all four to get control of the Senate. Morris says that is highly unlikely.
• The latest voter trends suggest the Republicans may not face disaster. The most recent Pew poll has the generic Democratic vote up just 4 points over the Republican vote. Morris says the GOP has been closing an 8 to 9 point gap in the past week.

But Morris says other developments may help the Republicans, including the verdict against Saddam Hussein.

Morris indicates polling over the weekend will show if the GOP may be rebounding even more just a day before Election Day.

 

"Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the Democrat leading his party’s effort to win control of the House, said, “It’s inevitable that there would be some tightening in the end.”

Still, Mr. Emanuel, who has been careful this campaign to avoid the public expressions of optimism voiced by other Democrats, added, “This is making me nervous.”

 

http://www.americanprowler.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10585

Republicans Will Hold On
By Quin Hillyer
Published 11/6/2006 12:08:13 AM

EXCERPT

Amidst all the liberal media's ill-disguised euphoria about horrible "generic" ballot numbers for Republicans, too many people are ignoring the fact that, just as in the Senate races, the Democrats are fighting on Republican terrain. Computer-aided gerrymandering has created a plethora of GOP-leaning seats. Incumbents still enjoy the advantages of having provided years of constituent service (not to mention pork, rancid though conservatives justly might think it). Most Republican incumbents also have enjoyed a big cash edge. And even in a year in which congressional approval ratings are at horrendously low levels, recent polls show that more than 60 percent of the public still approves of the job of their own representatives. Finally, by general agreement it is acknowledged that the overall quality of Democratic candidate recruitment this year was no better than fair-to-middling. There are more than a few races in which the same unimpressive Democratic candidates who lost big two years ago are challenging the same Republican incumbents who now are rated as endangered. Because the challengers are less than impressive, though, voters may in the end balk at voting for them over the better known and personally liked incumbents.

The fact is that the American electorate leans center-right, not center-left. Just last week a new CNN poll showed that 54 percent of Americans think government is too big and tries to do too much, versus only 37 percent who felt the opposite. And polls consistently show more Americans hold right-leaning cultural views than not. As the center-right party, therefore, the Republicans still enjoy an edge on the basic level of the electorate's overall world-view.

SNIP

Finally, for both the House and the Senate, the events of the past week have all broken in favor of Republicans. First came the idiotic slur against our troops by Democratic standard-bearer John Kerry. Then came the new unemployment numbers, which are spectacular. Then came the conviction of Saddam Hussein. And all this on top of a New York Times story that had the unintended (unintended by the Times, that is) consequence of confirming that when we liberated Iraq, Saddam Hussein was within not much more than a single, short year of achieving nuclear fission capability.

 

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=295

Republicans Cut Democratic Lead in Campaign's Final Days
Democrats Hold 47%-43% Lead Among Likely Voters

A nationwide Pew Research Center survey finds voting intentions shifting in the direction of Republican congressional candidates in the final days of the 2006 midterm campaign. The new survey finds a growing percentage of likely voters saying they will vote for GOP candidates. However, the Democrats still hold a 48% to 40% lead among registered voters, and a modest lead of 47%-43% among likely voters.

The narrowing of the Democratic lead raises questions about whether the party will win a large enough share of the popular vote to recapture control of the House of Representatives. The relationship between a party's share of the popular vote and the number of seats it wins is less certain than it once was, in large part because of the increasing prevalence of safe seat redistricting. As a result, forecasting seat gains from national surveys has become more difficult.