Much-Diminished GOP Absorbs the Voters' Ire

Nov. 8, 2006 — -- A much-diminished Republican president and his party stood before the voters Tuesday, their support corroded by an unpopular war. And the voters let them know it.

Fifty-seven percent in the national exit poll disapproved of the way President George W. Bush is handling his job, 56 percent disapproved of the war in Iraq and 55 percent -- the most since 1994 -- said the country is headed seriously off on the wrong track.

It mattered: Each of these groups voted overwhelmingly for Democrats running for the U.S. House, giving the Democrats a 53-45 percent advantage in national House vote in the exit poll, their best since 1990.

Indeed the Republicans lost huge chunks of crucial voting groups they'd won in recent years. Most important were independents, the quintessential swing voters: They favored Democrats by a huge 57-39 percent, the Democrats' largest margin among independents in 20 years. Democrats won women by 56-43 percent, their best margin since 1986; they even eked out a 51-47 percent tally among men, their best since 1992.

The president and the war were the lightning rods of the election. Among Bush approvers, 84 percent voted for the Republican candidate in House races. Among disapprovers -- the majority of voters -- 82 percent voted for a Democrat.

Another sign of the glum mood: Forty percent said they expect life for the next generation of Americans to be worse, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 33 percent in 1996.

Given such sentiments, voters by a 14-point margin were more apt to say they were voting to show opposition to Bush (36 percent) than to show him support (22 percent). The gap was decisive. House Republicans won voters who were supporting Bush, and also those who said Bush had no impact on their vote. But the anti-Bush voters were great enough in number to make the difference for the Democrats.

The 36 percent who said they were voting to oppose Bush was higher than the 21 percent who voted to show opposition to Bill Clinton in 1998, during the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal; and the 27 percent who did so in 1994, when the Republicans took control of Congress.

In another measure, among voters who said they supported Bush in 2004, 15 percent supported Democrats for House this year. Only about half as many John Kerry supporters -- 6 percent -- voted Republican for House.

Another result shows the direction of the voters' ire: In 1994, 65 percent of disaffected "wrong track" voters voted for Republicans for House. This year, among disaffected voters, even more -- 79 percent -- voted the opposite way, for Democrats.

Similarly, among the 61 percent of voters who said they disapprove of how Congress is handling its job, seven in 10 voted for Democrats for House. In 1994, Republicans won House disapprovers, but fewer of them -- 58 percent.

Groups -- The vote patterns show other problems for the GOP: It was isolated in the South, with the Democrats winning a majority in the Midwest for the first time in a decade. GOP gains among Hispanic voters in 2004 were reversed: This year 69 percent of Hispanic voters favored Democrats for House, up 14 points.

Further:

Message -- The voters' message was unmistakable. Just 42 percent approved of Bush's job performance, down 11 points from 2004 and a vast 25 points below its level just before the 2002 midterm election. Forty-two percent "strongly" disapproved, more than double the number of strong approvers (19 percent). Intensity of sentiment by contrast was about equal in 2004 -- 33 percent strongly approved of the president's performance, 35 percent strongly disapproved. And in 2002 it was strong approvers who dominated.

Views on the war in Iraq have followed a similar path. In the 2004 exit poll, 51 percent approved of the war -- just enough to keep Bush out of serious trouble. This year, just 42 percent approved. And 40 percent now "strongly" disapprove of the war, up from 32 percent two years ago.

The Republicans' pushback to concerns about the war in Iraq has been the broader U.S. campaign against terrorism, the issue that won Bush re-election in 2004. This year, it didn't work: Just 29 percent of voters said they trusted only the Republicans to make the country safer, far down from the 49 percent who only trusted Bush to handle terrorism in 2004.

Moreover, among terrorism voters – people who said terrorism is "extremely important" to their vote – the Republicans held only a 53-46 percent advantage. By contrast, the Democrats won by 60-38 percent among people who called the war in Iraq extremely important, and by a nearly identical 59-39 percent who said the same of the economy.

Voters by 59-35 percent also said the war in Iraq has not improved long-term U.S. security; that compares to 52-46 percent in 2004.

Indeed the election looks to have been nationalized around these concerns. Sixty percent of voters said they were casting their House vote mainly on the basis of national issues, vs. 34 percent voting on local issues. But it didn't much matter: Democrats won both groups, albeit "national issue" voters by a wider margin.

States -- A state-by-state analysis of some of the leading Senate races follows:

Remarkably intense negative feelings about Bush and the war in Iraq helped Ned Lamont give Joe Lieberman a run for his money; indeed Lieberman lost overwhelmingly among Democrats. But, extraordinarily, he won overwhelmingly among Republicans, as well as holding the center.

Lieberman, running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Lamont, won just 32 percent of Democrats, but 54 percent of independents and 71 percent of Republicans. He also won a majority of moderates (55 percent) and two-thirds of conservatives. Lamont won 70 percent liberals.

Nearly all of Lamont's voters disapproved of Bush and the war, but Lieberman's camp proved more complex. While 51 percent of his supporters disapproved of Bush's job performance, 71 percent of them said he agrees with the president the right amount. And half of Lieberman's supporters disapprove of the Iraq war but voted for the senator despite his support for the war.