Democratic Fundraising

Polls favor Republicans at the moment, but fundraising figures favor Democrats. The Washington Post reports:

The Republican Party's strategy since early last year of lock-step opposition to the Obama administration's major legislative initiatives has proved to be less bankable than some party leaders may have anticipated.

Eight months before congressional elections, House and Senate Democratic candidates lead in nearly every important campaign fundraising category. Democratic House lawmakers appear likely to reverse their seven-cycle record of being outspent by House Republicans, according to recent finance reports.

But one cautionary note for Democrats: the last time the mean expenditure for Democratic House candidates exceeded the mean GOP expenditure was ... 1994, the year the GOP took control of the House. See data here.

Filling Gaps in the White House Website, Part 40

The Media Research Center offers the full transcript of the president's recent interview with Harry Smith. Apparently, the complete text is available nowhere else on the free Internet. The full Lauer interview text still remains unavailable on the free Internet.

The New York Times has published excerpts of its interview with the president on nuclear weapons. The president was understandably cautious:

• "Rather than speculate, let’s say what we know."
• "I’m not going to parse that right now."
• "I’m not going to speculate on Israeli decision-making."
• "I’m not going to parse these, parse words here."
• "I’m not going to — - I’m not going to talk about the details of Pakistan’s nuclear ——"
• "I’ll leave it up to my team to brief you in terms of some of those commitments, some of which may not be announced until next week when the summit actually takes place."

Taking Tea

The "tea party" movement is not so far out of the mainstream, as two recent polls suggest. Rasmussen finds:

On major issues, 48% of voters say that the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than President Barack Obama. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 44% hold the opposite view and believe the president’s views are closer to their own.

Gallup finds:

Tea Party supporters skew right politically; but demographically, they are generally representative of the public at large. That's the finding of a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted March 26-28, in which 28% of U.S. adults call themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement.Tea Party supporters are decidedly Republican and conservative in their leanings. Also, compared with average Americans, supporters are slightly more likely to be male and less likely to be lower-income.In several other respects, however -- their age, educational background, employment status, and race -- Tea Partiers are quite representative of the public at large.

CA: A Poll on Health and Politics

A Los Angeles Times/USC poll shows that Californians seem to be outliers in the health care debate, showing support for a measure that gets opposition elsewhere.

The poll also had some findings about decline-to-state voters:

In the race for senator, they were with Democrat Barbara Boxer, a political figure whom many of them grew up with and who shares their social profile.

In the race for governor, they were inclined toward Republican Meg Whitman, whose ads -- which do not mention her party and are big on efficiency and shaking up the status quo -- appeal to their secular political views. The Democrat in the race, Jerry Brown, will turn 72 this week and left office before many of the nonpartisans were either born or living here. Thirty-nine percent couldn't identify him, far more than Democrats or Republicans.

(Questionnaire here)

Bad Numbers for Dems Continue

The 2010 midterm is still several months away, and much could happen (.e.g., a quick economic turnaround, a foreign policy triumph) that could help the Democrats. Still the downpour of bad numbers continues.

From CBS:

Last week, President Obama signed historic health care reform legislation into law -- but his legislative success doesn't seem to have helped his image with the American public.

The latest CBS News Poll, conducted between March 29 and April 1, found Americans unhappier than ever with Mr. Obama's handling of health care - and still worried about the state of the economy.

President Obama's overall job approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 44 percent, down five points from late March, just before the health bill's passage in the House of Representatives. It's down 24 points since his all-time high last April. Forty-one percent of those polled said they disapproved of the president's performance.

More from CBS, on the health bill:

Fifty-three percent of Americans say they disapprove of the new reforms, including 39 percent who say they disapprove strongly. In the days before the bill passed the House, 37 percent said they approved and 48 percent disapproved.

Republicans and independents remain opposed to the reforms, and support has dropped some among Democrats. Now 52 percent of Democrats approve of the new reforms, a drop from 60 percent just before the bill was passed by Congress.

From Gallup:

Americans' views of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are not fundamentally changed after the passage of healthcare reform. Though more Americans now have an opinion of her, both her favorable and her unfavorable ratings are up from the last reading, to 36% and 54%, respectively. The currently net-negative view of Pelosi from the March 26-28 USA Today/Gallup poll stands in stark contrast to opinions of her as she became speaker of the House in January 2007. At that time, twice as many Americans viewed her favorably (44%) as unfavorably (22%).

Filling Gaps in the White House Website, Part 39

Harry Smith of CBS interviewed the president. At the moment, no full transcript is available on the free Internet. A partial transcript is here. The video is below:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Data Still Challenging for Democrats

USA Today reports:

Americans anxious about unemployment and the economy increasingly blame President Obama for hard times, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, amid signs of turbulence in November's midterm elections.

Last week's jubilant signing of the health care overhaul, Obama's signature domestic initiative, seems to have given the president little boost. Instead, his standing on four personal qualities has sagged, and 50% of those surveyed say he doesn't deserve re-election.

Gallup reports:

Registered voters now say they prefer the Republican to the Democratic candidate in their district by 47% to 44% in the midterm congressional elections, the first time the GOP has led in 2010 election preferences since Gallup began weekly tracking of these in March.