Seeing Red in Red America

            They’re seeing red in Red America, according to the results of a Quinnipiac University Poll released last week.  Though the media was preoccupied with what the poll had to say about how Americans perceived the current leading presidential candidates, it missed what could be early evidence of an impending Republican meltdown in 2016.  I’ll get to the numbers in a moment, but first I want to place the results in context.

            From a political standpoint, the United States is a highly polarized nation.  We no longer have very many liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats.  In Congress, the most liberal Republican is still more conservative than the most conservative Democrat.

            This polarization is not entirely the result of gerrymandered seats in Congress.  It reflects a  political and geographical realignment of American politics that has been going on for the last 40 years.  Our communities are now more politically segregated than at any other time in our nation’s history.  We now live in communities where most people agree with us politically, and we rarely come into deep contact with people who are staunch supporters of the other party.  It’s gotten so bad that, after we look to a person’s religion, we look to his or her politics to decide that person is worth dating or marrying.

            In terms of public opinion, Republicans and Democrats are often mirror images of each other. We ought to expect that Democrats will feel antipathy for Republicans and that Republicans will not much like Democrats or their leaders.  For example, when asked whether they held a favorable opinion of Barack Obama, only about 10% of Republicans held a favorable opinion of him while 88% held an unfavorable opinion.  On the other hand, 89% of Democrats held a favorable opinion while only 8% held an unfavorable opinion.

            Here’s where things begin to get interesting.  In Table 1, I’ve provided the results of a similar question asked about the Democratic and Republican parties.

Table 1

	Democrats		Republicans
	Dem. Party	Rep. Party	Dem. Party	Rep. Party
Favorable	81%	7%	5%	64%
Unfavorable	10%	83%	87%	27%
N/A	8%	9%	7%	8%
Net Favorability	71%	-74%	-82%	37%

You can see that Democrats have strongly favorable impressions of the Democratic Party and highly negative impressions of the Republican Party.  Republicans hold a highly negative opinion of the Democratic Party.

            Republicans, though, do not see the Republican Party as favorably as the Democrats see the Democratic Party.  In fact, there’s a gap of 17 percentage points between the way the Democrats see their party and the way that Republicans see their party.  And, if you subtract the respondents who saw their party unfavorably from the respondents who saw their party favorably to get a “Net Favorability” score for each party, its fair to say that Democrats like their party almost twice as much as Republicans like their party.

            A recent Pew Research Center poll confirms these results.  According to Pew, the percentage of Republicans who view their party unfavorably has doubled since January of 2015.  The percentage of Independents who say they lean Republican and have a favorable opinion of the GOP has fallen by about 15 percentage points.  On balance only 44% of Independents now say they have a favorable opinion of the GOP.

            Despite the fact that their party now controls Congress, only 11% of Republicans say they are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the U.S. government compared to 51% of Democrats and 20% of Independents.  And 39% of Republicans say that they are angry with the federal government, compared to only 9% of Democrats.

            According to the Quinnipiac poll, Republicans don’t seem willing to trust their political professionals.  Table 2 shows how the parties differ in terms of the political experience they are looking for in presidential candidates.  Over three

Table 2

	Republicans	Democrats	Independents
Want a D.C. Insider	21%	77%	37%
Want a D.C. Outsider	73%	18%	55%
Don’t know	6%	6%	5%

quarters of the Democratic respondents want a D.C. insider.  Almost three quarters of the Republican respondents want a D.C. outsider.  And that’s why Donald Trump, a businessman, and Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, neither of whom have any experience in government, currently top the polls both in Iowa and in the nation.

            American presidential elections are all about turnout.  One key to turnout is enthusiasm.  Angry voters may well stay home on election day if they feel that they have no one to vote for.  That could be important if an establishment type ultimately wins the Republican nomination.

            The Republicans clearly have a problem with politics as usual that the Democrats don’t have.  All of the announced Democratic candidates are experience politicians.  They generally know what it takes to get elected, and after getting elected, they know what it takes to govern.  The same can’t be said of the current Republican frontrunners.

            These numbers ought to have the Republican establishment quaking in its boots.  The pitchforks are out.  Rank and file Republican voters seem ready to rumble.