They do not ask about abortion.

That issue is still the only "single issue" issue that motivates some voters.

Now we can guess that the people who have voted on that issue alone are disenchanted and will not vote or may just vote on balance. I'm not willing to guess that. Getting everybody else to vote is more important.

phat

with all the talk of republican "mandate" starting in 2000, did they ever win the polling on every single issue across the board? i  don't think so. so if the republicans ever had a mandate (according to the media), the democrats have an even greater one than the repubs ever had.

This is a fascinating response for voters to trust Democrats more on:

Same-sex marriage: Democrats 46, Republicans 36

While race has been an unstated tool used by every reactionary from Joe Lieberman to Trent Lott, homophobia has been seemingly far more effectively utilized in recent years as well as being bluntly stated as such.

I would love to have seen this broken down regionally because it could put the lie to the proposition that Democrats in the South and elsewhere must use bigoted appeals in order to be elected.  Some folks would seemingly welcome David Duke into the "big tent" party if he would just proclaim himself a Democrat.

Best,  Terry

There is something screwy with the URL for the poll - neither right-click nor left-click gets it for me.

But when you say

voters are on board with the Democratic agenda.

First question: how well do they know what the Dem agenda is?

I've tried to follow religiously the various editions of New Direction/Six for 06 and I'm far from clear what it is!

(The closest we've got to consistency is Nancy's current 100 hour plan, I think. But that hardly covers the entirety of the Dem agenda.

Plus: how many of those polled could identify the key elements of even the 100 hour plan? Was that polled?)

Second, the list doesn't take into account the strength of opinion. Folks have had recent evidence of what the GOP capabilities are (poor bastards!); they have no comparable evidence of the Dems'.

So their thoughts about how the Dems would handle these issues is based on - what? Hope, pretty much.

Bottom line: they are going to be much surer about their views on the GOP than the Dems.

(Or: any strong views they have on the Dems are more likely to change when actual evidence starts to appear from a Dem-controlled 110th.)

I believe, therefore, that the numbers in your piece do not support (or are only weak evidence of) your suggestion that voters are supporting Dems rather than merely opposing the GOP.

At the risk of being the wet blanket, let me point out a couple of cautionary notes:

If we win the House, it will probably be by a pretty small margin, and we will have a very ideologically diverse Dem caucus. While we're finally headed in the right direction, it'll be a couple more cycles before the House is "progressive".  Meanwhile, expect to hear constantly about the divisiveness and lack of coherence in the Democratic caucus.

On the other hand, if we handled this right, we could make a strong case for what a National Unity government, led by Democrats, could look like. In the process, we could pre-empt the phony "bipartisanship' pushed by Broder, Ignatius, Lieberman, McCain et al.

Next, it doesn't matter what issues polls prove. The GOP will spin what it wants to spin regardless, and the Beltway media will enable them. If you listened to NPR this morning with Bush spewing nonsense, interrupted only by the NPR reporter announcing uncritically what the next line of attack would be, followed by Ken Rudin and Mara Liasson pushing the Rove/Mehlman election talking points, followed by Steve Innskeep's aggressive questioning of Howard Dean, in a voice practically dripping with hostility, you'll have heard how it's going to be. Imagine, ABC, NBC, & Katie Cutesie. Then there's cable, and we haven't even gotten to talk radio or the print pundits.

The media (MSM?, Old Media?, Establishment Media?, Beltway Media? Corporate Media? Pick one) will be against us, no matter what. We need to push back aggressively. Work the refs, as Alterman would say. Angrily denounce this "liberal media" myth. Our people in Washington seem to cower and hope it just gets better. It won't. We have to fight it.

As for the elections, it's still "if". We are not having an election. We are having 435 separate House elections, and 33 separate Senate elections. While we are certainly going to be better off than two years ago, it's still way too soon to pop champagne. House polling is a bit iffy, and alot of the races are still in the persuadable phase. We still seem to be outgunned on GOTV. One interesting thing Mara Liasson said was that the Gallup(I think) poll of independents showed that 45% of the I's had been personally contacted by Republicans, but only 17% had been contacted by Democrats. That's simply terrible.  Whoever is the "coach" of that team needs to be fired after the season.

It's reassuring to see that the American population is way ahead of the Media. The disaster that has unfolded in our country these past few years is finally going to be addressed in the next few years. We shouldn't fool ourselves, though, that the nightmare is over if we take the House by a few seats. We need a much longer term focus. Where will we be in 2008 and 2010 and beyond? Markos had a good post on this topic a couple days ago. I apologize for not being able to link it, but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

What about voters who would "trust the Democrats" and "dont like what Republicans are doing" -- but exempt their OWN Republican.

In other words, they "trust the Dems" but vote for their OWN familiar Republican candidate.

Won't this skew this polls?