Obama’s Declining Approval Rating & What The 2014 Elections May Look Like

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Sean Trende writes an excellent article about the upcoming 2014 election and how the President’s approval rating will affect it:

Here’s the relationship between presidential job approval in the final Gallup poll before midterm Election Day and the share of the president’s party’s congressional delegation that went down to defeat:

This isn’t a perfect relationship, but presidential job approval is still the most important variable for how his party fares in midterm elections, explaining about half of the variance. The relationship is highly statistically significant: For every point in job approval the president loses, his party loses 0.6 percent of its caucus. (The chart doesn’t measure drop in job approval; just job approval.) So, at 60 percent, the president should lose 5 percent of his caucus; at 50 percent, it is around 12 percent of his caucus lost; at 40 percent, it’s about 18 percent of his caucus lost — which would be 36 seats.

Sean goes on to write that picking up 36 seats is unlikely to happen since the Republican’s have the third largest majority since 1946. Way above the average but if these ratings continue he can see up to 20 seats being lost by the Democrats.

The Senate?

In 2010, I remarked that Democrats had dodged a bullet in terms of the Senate, because their most vulnerable seats weren’t up for re-election that cycle. I noted, however, that getting smacked with a wave in 2012 or 2014 could set the Democratic Party back for years, because of how overexposed they were in those cycles. Will there be a wave in 2014? We don’t know, but a lot will depend on where the president’s approval rating is on Election Day. For Democratic members of the House and Senate, his job approval is no laughing matter.

ObamaCare has come to fruition and his ratings will continue to decline as the country begins to understand just how flawed it is and how much it will hurt their pocketbook. The Senate just might be in play:

There are 21 US Senate seats up for re-election in 2014 that are currently held by Democrats, with more than half of those being vulnerable. These seats were won during the 2008 sweep year when President Barack Obama brought millions of new first time voters to the polls, and helping many of the down-ticket candidates along the way. While the Republicans are defending 14 seats in mostly conservative states, Democrats are defending a mixture of liberal, moderate, and conservative seats. The GOP would need to swing 6 seats to take control of the US Senate.

Here are the ones Dustin Hawkins believes is in play:

MAP-OF-USA-VULNERABLE-DEMS-01-1024x576Courtesy of SooperMexican

And as the ObamaCare debacle continues, and rest assured it will, the Presidents ratings will continue to decline as will the Senators who also lied to us along with the President:

For many Democrats, the keep-your-coverage pledge was not a throwaway line; it was a fundamental part of their case for Obamacare.

How many Democrats made the promise? There’s no comprehensive list of all of them, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office has compiled a list of 27 Democratic senators who pledged that Americans could keep their coverage under Obamacare. The list includes the entire Democratic leadership in the Senate as well as Democrats facing tough re-election races in 2014, like Mary Landrieu, Mark Begich, and Kay Hagan.

Obama and pals will pull multiple wag the dog moments for sure, but ObamaCare isn’t going away. When individuals are burned economically and personally they will remember the party who is responsible.

Every Democrat voted for it, every Republican voted against it.

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0-blama lied to America and got elected twice!! His liberal socialist agenda has and is failing!! The sad part is that the MSM stuck to his talking points instead of telling the truth!! America is paying the price!!

The cluster diagram looks bi-modal. When the popularity is above 50%, congress is okay or gets a boost from the president’s coattails. A small drop below 50% triggers a big hit for the caucus. When the president’s narrative enters negative territory, the bad news is amplified to the hurt of incumbents in the same party.