Some Hope on a Rainy Day

With all the doom, and gloom around these days, I found this particularly hopeful.

John Podhertz

And yet, there is surprisingly little indication, from the results of either the 2006 election or this one, that the low repute in which the GOP is held translates into broad support for the Democratic party. According to the website Pollster.com, the approval rating of the Democrat-controlled Congress fell from 27 percent on election day 2006 to 15 percent just before election day 2008, a drop of 44 percent. And while, as we have seen, the GOP’s partisan identification numbers tumbled by five points, or 13 percent, between 2004 and 2008, Democratic partisan identification rose by only two points, or 5 percent. In other words, voters who ceased being Republicans outnumbered voters who became Democrats by two-and-a-half to one.