Two new polls out by Gallup and Resurgent Republic have good signs in them for conservatives hoping to defeat Barack Obama next year. Gallup's poll shows the Democrat Party moving further to the left ideologically, with conservatives now outnumbering liberals in America at the same ratio Prop 103 went down in defeat: two-to-one. Resurgent Republic, a polling outfit headed by former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie, has a poll showing serious signs of trouble for Obama in key swing states, including Colorado.
The Gallup poll was based on daily tracking polls from June to August 2011 and was compared against daily tracking polls from January to March 2008. Their most significant finding? Democrats are becoming more liberal, while the country is becoming more conservative:
Perhaps the most significant change in the composition of Democrats between 2008 and today is the two-point increase, from 35% to 37%, in the percentage describing their political views as "liberal." This occurred at a time when the country as a whole became slightly more conservative, thus expanding the political gap between Democrats and the rest of the U.S.
Case in point in Colorado: Prop 103. While Coloradans were struggling with record unemployment and foreclosures, many legislative leaders in the Democrat Party were pushing a $3 Billion tax increase. Despite Obama himself and former President Clinton saying raising taxes in a recession is a bad idea, Obama has followed the path of his party and is now pushing over $1 Trillion in new taxes.
That leftward drift occurred while the number of conservatives continued to climb, with 42% of American adults now identifying themselves as conservative, while a mere 21% admitted to being liberals.
While the ideological pendulum is swinging back towards the GOP, Obama continues his leftward trajectory, and that will cause problems for his re-election.
Resurgent Republic conducted a poll of 1000 voters to gauge the electorate's sentiment on Obama one year out from Election Day. Here's what they found about Obama in key swing states:
A majority of voters in swing states says it is time for someone else to be President. We have defined swing states here as eight states that voted for Bush in 2004 and Obama in 2008 (CO, FL, IA, NC, NM, NV, OH, VA), plus four other states whose 2010 Republican victories make them fertile ground for a Republican presidential nominee (MI, NH, PA, WI). In those 12 states:
- A majority of voters, 53 percent, thinks it is time for someone else to be President; only 40 percent think Obama deserves reelection.
- Independents in those states overwhelmingly think it is time for someone else, 61 percent; only 28 percent think he deserves reelection.
That extraordinarily high number among Independents wanting change at the White House has got to be causing some blood pressures to rise at Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago.
With Colorado's voter registration nearly even among Republicans, Democrats and Independents/Unaffiliateds, any statewide candidate can't win without that essential Unaffiliated vote.
As elections have two choices — change or more of the same — with so many key swing voters in key swing states saying they want a new President in the White House in 2013, it is time we get some real change to believe in.