By Charlie Cook, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006

When you talk privately with veteran Republican campaign strategists and consultants, the common concern about the upcoming midterm elections is whether their troops will be as motivated as they were in 2004, 2002 or even 2000.

	Democrats have a pronounced intensity advantage and enough of one to probably outweigh the GOP organizational edge.

Historically, when parties have suffered unusually large losses in midterm elections, it has been when their voters were either complacent or disillusioned, and the other party was either hungry or angry. That turns tight races into tough losses and races that shouldn't be particularly close into nail-biters.

Keep in mind that in presidential elections, roughly half of the voting-age population participates. In midterm elections, it is roughly a third. But the drop-off in participation is hardly uniform. Voter turnout among independents is far lower in midterm elections than in presidential years, and as a result, the election is determined pretty much by partisans, and which party does a better job of getting its base out. Some of this is mechanical, and indeed Republicans have in recent years done a better job than Democrats with the mechanics. But even great mechanics and organizational efforts are limited in their effectiveness when a party's base is not motivated.

When Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff interviewed 893 registered voters in their March 10-13 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, they asked voters how interested they were in this November's midterm election on a scale of one to 10, with one representing not at all interested and 10 being very interested.

The result: 53 percent of Democrats chose 10, compared to only 43 percent of Republicans. And only 34 percent of independents were 10s. Only 7 percent of Democrats, and the same percentage of Republicans, chose 9, so that doesn't close the gap much.

To look at the same situation from a slightly different angle, of those who said they preferred to see Democrats in control of Congress after the November elections, 53 percent chose 10, but of those that wanted to see Republicans in control, only 38 percent chose 10.

Nobody knows what will transpire between now and November and how much intensity each party's voters will have, but as of now, Democrats have a pronounced intensity advantage and enough of one to probably outweigh the GOP organizational edge.

Another sign is party identification trends over the last six years. Any time I write about national polling, I can count on getting angry e-mails from conservatives across the country complaining that because virtually all of the national polls have more Democrats in their samples than Republicans, the polls are flawed and yet another example of mainstream media bias. Somehow they seem to think that it is written in stone that the country is precisely 50-50 between the two parties, thus any poll not reflecting that party split is wrong and the result of bias.

To address this I turned to Bill McInturff, the Republican half of the Hart-McInturff NBC/WSJ duo and partner in Public Opinion Strategies, one of the most highly respected GOP polling firms, and indisputably the largest, boasting 18 sitting Republican senators, 12 governors and 58 House members as clients. According to McInturff, when POS merged all their national poll data quarter by quarter for 2004, 2005 and so far in 2006, Republicans started off "a few points down and slipped to roughly minus six or so." He noted that they used the November 2004 presidential election vote to "anchor" the weighting so that he knows that it really is a party ID shift, and not a "biased" sample.

When another highly respected Republican pollster was asked about party identification over the last couple of years, the strategist, who preferred not to be named, said that back in 2001 and 2002, there was rough parity between the parties, and that it had slipped to a Republican deficit of two points by Election Day 2004, and currently, the deficit is about four points.

McInturff was quick to say that this is the party shift among registered voters and that the numbers among an all adult sample, which is what most media pollsters do far out from an election, would be somewhat different. When asked what the rule of thumb would be for the disparity, the difference can range from two to five points more Democratic, but usually three points.

This should not be earth shattering news. After the halo effect from 9/11 wore off, and as the president's job-approval ratings dropped and right direction/wrong track numbers worsened, these influences were bound to have an effect on GOP party ID, just as when a Democratic president is having a tough time, it takes a toll on Democratic Party ID.

Even looking at the president's approval ratings among Republicans is a tip off. At one point, his approval rating among fellow party members was above 90 percent, and it has generally run in the 80s, which has kept him above 40 percent in approval among the broader electorate in all but the worst of times. In that NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, his current approval rating among Republicans is down to 76 percent (among independents 28 percent, Democrats 9 percent).

The bottom line is that Republicans have a motivation problem. Record-high budget deficits, Hurricane Katrina, the ill-fated Harriet Myers nomination, a controversial war that isn't going well and the port security issue have combined to weigh down enthusiasm among GOP voters, and if that persists, it could result in a very ugly midterm election.

Whether events change that, or Republican strategists find a way to enthuse their base remains to be seen, but there is no question -- the problem exists. Of course, the more Democrats talk about censuring or even impeaching President Bush, it's a pretty good bet that the intensity level of Republicans could rise, negating that Democratic advantage. That should explain to Sen. Russ Feingold why only one of his fellow 44 Democrats in the Senate have signed onto his censure resolution. We'll continue to watch those intensity numbers for any possible shift.

-- Charlie Cook is a NationalJournal.com contributing editor, weekly columnist for National Journal magazine and the founder and publisher of the Cook Political Report. This column also runs in CongressDailyAM when Congress is in session. His e-mail address is cookreport@nationaljournal.com.

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