With exactly 29 days until Election Day, the playing field continues to tilt heavily in Republicans’ favor. A tidal wave of grassroots energy – which began with Americans’ opposition to the Democrats’ $787 billion stimulus debacle and grew stronger with last summer’s health care town hall meetings – will finally come to a head on November 2nd.
As a recent American University study made clear, “Republican turnout in their statewide primaries exceeded Democratic turnout in theirs by more than 4 million votes.” Not only was Republican primary turnout especially high, as the report finds, but “[t]he average percentage of eligible citizens who voted in Democratic primaries was the lowest ever.” The study noted that this signal of Republicans’ substantial enthusiasm advantage is yet “another sign that the Democratic Party is in deep trouble in the 2010 mid-term elections.”
It’s not a coincidence that when Democrats took over both houses of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, they held a 7-point enthusiasm advantage over Republicans; in 2008, with President Obama on the ballot, Democrats enjoyed a 14-point enthusiasm gap. Today, Gallup shows Republicans with a 20-point enthusiasm advantage over Democrats.
Full story: NRSC NRSC Memo: Update On Senate Elections