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Go Home The GOP Midwest Implosion Accelerates

JONATHAN CHAIT MARCH 16, 2011

The GOP Midwest Implosion Accelerates

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

Gray Davis's pollster thinks Wisconsin Democrats will not only flip the state Senate, they'll recall Scott Walker when he's eligible for it next year:

Drawing on his work for Davis, Maslin said he believes both sides will succeed in gathering the necessary signatures to force recall elections. "I can remember many, many conference calls," he told The Huffington Post, "where various people who were supposedly experts" doubted the ability of Davis' opponents to force a recall. "The bottom line was, they had no problem getting the signatures. And this [was] 2003, before the advent of Facebook and social networking." ...

Perhaps not surprisingly, Maslin predicted that Democrats will succeed in recalling Republican senators and reclaiming a majority of the Wisconsin Senate, which he described as the "first act" leading ultimately to a recall election against Scott Walker and his ouster from office. "We will have an election next year to see who our governor is going to be, and I don't believe that [Walker's] situation will change enough" to allow him to prevail, he said.

And Sherrod Brown, the liberal-populist Democratic Ohio Senator until recently considered very vulnerable is now enjoying massive leads:

In December, polls showed Brown in a precarious position, barely leading relatively unknown Republicans in hypothetical 2012 contests. But in the latest survey, Brown has suddenly shot ahead of his GOP rivals, such that he now leads each of them by double-digit margins; his lead over one challenger exploded from a miniscule 2 points in December to 19 in the latest poll.

In the latest poll, Brown led Lieutenant Governor Mary Taylor 49% to 30%, a drastic change from December when he led 40% to 38%. Similarly, his lead over Secretary of State Jon Husted grew from a five-point margin to a robust 15-point margin now, with Brown on top 49% to 34%. And Rep. Jim Jordan, who trailed by 10 points in December, now trails by 19, 49% to 30%.

This is happening so fast it's hard to believe. Are Republican governors creating that big of a backlash?

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11 comments

This is delightful, if it proves to be the case.

- liberalref

March 16, 2011 at 2:14pm

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It's early, but I knew the GOP wouldn't let me down they can't help themselves.

- Pnaut

March 16, 2011 at 2:38pm

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Sure, you get these dramatic swings when you ask the question so close to the disasterous event. Dyed in the wool Tea-Partiers would NEVER forget somebody who raised taxes, or even voted for a Stimulus Package. I wonder how long Democrats will remember?

- AllanL5

March 16, 2011 at 2:40pm

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Eagerly awaiting the next WSJ column on how people still don't quite yet fully appreciate the beneficence of breaking the unions.

- Simon Greenwood

March 16, 2011 at 2:56pm

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I'm with AllanL here. How long until that election?

- cspencef

March 16, 2011 at 3:12pm

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I'm with cspencef. Swing voters have a notoriously short memory span, so if the new laws aren't directly tied to broad, drastically negative, ongoing impacts on the economy of the state it won't matter anymore.

- GSpinks

March 16, 2011 at 4:14pm

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The harbinger is like a Scott Brown in the coal mine.

- Nusholtz

March 16, 2011 at 8:35pm

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Could it just be the fact that the GOP actual policy positions are exceedingly unpopular in the concrete as opposed to the abstract of repeating mindless slogans like "small government." The govs. are actually implementing GOP policy and people hate it!

- MikeB.

March 16, 2011 at 8:51pm

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Kirk: "Don't trust them, don't believe them." Spock: "They are dying." Kirk: "Let them die." It will be a great day when Walker joins Santorum at Fox News.

- Bukharin

March 16, 2011 at 8:57pm

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I suspect that once Walker started his negotiating tactic of holding ordinary citizens' jobs hostage to get his way with fellow politicians, combined with it becoming public that he considered sprinkling thugs among the crowd to incite violence, people had their eyes opened just a tad. (It also doesn't hurt that that last revelation forms a nice contrast to the constant demonizing of union members as violent thugs.) Plus, Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald stating that his aim is the annihilation of the Democratic party kind of made clear what the stakes are. No more games. Oh, incidentally, libref-is your first post a case of indulging in some schadenfreude? Just a tad?

- janus

March 17, 2011 at 9:14am

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well, the elections in wisconsin will come sooner than later. As to elections in Ohio, etc., well, yes, people's memories of specific events are short. But once a particular pol gets sorted, in their minds, into a particular bin, they don't usually get out of it again. If, as I suspect, the GOP governors were elected primarily because they weren't Dems, rather than for affirmative reasons, then, it seems most likely that these polls may reflect affirmative changes in beliefs about said pols.

- miceelf

March 17, 2011 at 10:56am

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