Common Sense

There is a plethora of polls out now. Several national polls have President Bush’s approval rating dropping just ahead of the midterm elections. He may not be up for re-election, but his party is suffering because of his low numbers.

Not to mention how Congressional Republicans have acted since he became president. Amazingly, for the first time since I started following politics, the biggest indicator for voting trends seems to have disappeared. It used to be that if you were a white, church-going protestant, you could be counted on to go vote Republican in every election. Those numbers look to have dried up after revelations in the Mark Foley sex scandal and possible GOP leadership cover up.

And the new book by David Kuo, the former number two guy at the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. Tempting Faith reveals how the Republican machine cons evangelicals into voting for Republicans and working hard for the party apparatus while making fun of them behind closed doors and not really giving them anything.

So now the NY Times/CBS News poll shows Democrats essentially tied with Republicans on the ’shares my moral values’ and ‘trust more with national security’ questions. That’s significant and bodes well for Democrats this close to an election.

My favorite recent poll, though, was the one released before the weekend by the Chet Edwards campaign. It shows the incumbent Democrat Edwards ahead of Van Taylor 54-33% with about 12% undecided of likely voters. I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that Edwards has the endorsement of two major newspapers. Both the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Dallas Morning News recommend voting for him on Nov. 7.

Around this time in 2004, Edwards had a comfortable lead over Arlene Wohlgemuth, too. He led her 50-40% with a +/- 4.9 margin. It seems to me those undecideds in the most recent poll were Republicans in ‘04, but may have been soured when, say, the Trib ran that photo of Denny Hastert and Van Taylor on the local front after the Mark Foley scandal broke. (Ed. note: See how long I’ve been doing this? I actually linked to that poll when it came out but it has since been removed from the site.)

All in all, I feel pretty good about his chances. That 50-40 turned into 51-47 on election day, and that was with Bush carrying her on his way to re-election.