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Suffolk University-USA Today Poll: GOP's popularity 'is in freefall'

And one factor is that Trump performance in office has energized the Democratic Party;a great many Democrats who sat this one out because they did not like Hilary very much won't sit out the next one.
 
Nova Land said:
I disagree that Democrats have little or no chance of winning these states. The problem I see Democrats having is that they've largely written a lot of areas off and aren't even trying to win people in those areas over.

Tennessee, where I live, is a good example of that. West Virginia's an even better one. I've seen people on pro-Democratic sites such as Daily Kos arguing that West Virginia is pretty much hopeless and the best they can do if they want to win anything in W.Va. is run candidates who are conservative enough they could virtually pass for Republicans. (For example Jim Justice, the Democratic candidate who won last year's governorship and then changed his party affiliation to Republican soon after.)

Which overlooks the fact that for decades West Virginia consistently elected Democrats to the US senate, and consistently elected a majority-Democratic congressional delegation, and consistently had Democratic control of the state legislature. (The governorship switched parties on a regular basis, but that's another story.) It's only in the last decade that W. Va. has become so Republican. It's been quite a while since I lived in W. Va. but my assumption is that's not so much an acceptance of the current Republican party as a rejection of the current Democratic party.

A large proportion of the electorate no longer bothers to vote in elections. In some cases that may be due to obstacles to voting; but in many cases, I believe it's because they just don't see any compelling reason to put the time and effort into voting when they could be doing laundry or washing their hair instead. Democrats (and Republicans) may talk about making things better for the average person, but in practice the laws which get passed and policies which get enacted favor the people and corporations which are able to make large contributions.

Until Democrats can show lower-income and middle-income people that Democrats if elected really will work for and pass laws benefiting the nation as a whole rather than laws mainly benefiting the wealthy few, the Democrats are going to continue to lose a large number of people who should be their base -- as has already happened in West Virginia, in Kentucky, in Ohio, in Tennessee and many other places.

Bernie Sanders actually excited a lot of the people who had largely written the Democrats off in recent years (or who were young enough never to have felt the excitement); and instead of responding, Yes! We'd love to welcome a you folks back into the tent the response of many in the Democratic circle was If you're not already committed to blindly supporting us then we don't need your vote, so get lost.

Until Democrats realize that the way one wins people into one's tent is by making them feel welcome (rather than unwelcome) and making them feel you'll actually implement policies which will help them and their families if you're elected (rather than spouting nice-sounding rhetoric and then consistently doing little or nothing), Democrats are going to continue losing. A 7% increase in Republican unfavorability in the nation as a whole is not going to change that any time soon.




A 7% shift in the states you list might indeed have a significant effect. But the poll cited in the OP doesn't indicate such a shift occurred in any of those states. It's a national poll of 1,000 people. It says that nationwide 7% now view the GOP more unfavorably than they did. It says nothing about what the changes in each individual state were -- but I strongly suspect the GOP unfavorability has risen significantly in California, New York, Massachusetts, and other populous left-leaning areas, and that that's a considerable factor in the 7% figure.

If GOP unfavorability has gone up more than 7% in those areas, then it will have gone up less than 7% in other areas. How much it went up, we don't know. We need state polls, not a national poll, to tell us that; and the linked article does not provide state polls.
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First off as I recall polls in states like Wisconsin showed huge Trump buyers remorse recently.

But secondly why do the Democrats have to be the good guys and embrace more? The GOP's entire platform right now is "vote for us if you want to make libtards suffer even if it also means you suffer!" and seem to have done alright with it. Tennessee is a good example. Voters there don't want to make their own lives better they just want to hurt liberals and perceived liberals. Why can't the Democrats simply point out that other side are literal monsters in states with voters that aren't simply looking to spread misery?
 
Travis said:
Why can't the Democrats simply point out that other side are literal monsters in states with voters that aren't simply looking to spread misery?
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Because that approach works well on people inclined toward the Republican side -- as we've seen empirically from this past election, where many leaners who were initially repelled by the thought of voting for Trump got on board because they were moved by the pitch: you have to vote for Trump, because otherwise you'll get Hillary Clinton. Their hatred of Clinton (fed for the past 25 years by right-wing talk show hosts and GOP fund-raising pitches) and their hatred of what Clinton might do if elected (appoint judges who would preserve Roe v Wade, for instance) was sufficient to move them to vote for Trump regardless of how bad he might be.

But that approach does not work well on people inclined toward the Democratic side -- as we've also seen empirically from this past election, where dislike for Trump was not sufficient to move leaners to vote for Clinton. You have to vote for Clinton because otherwise you get Trump; you don't have any other choice was not a winning message.

People on the right are more inclined to take action based on their dislikes and fears -- i.e. negative actions, actions which are more designed to stop or obstruct something than to accomplish something. People on the left are more inclined to take action based on their hopes to accomplish things they want to see happen -- i.e. positive actions, actions which are more designed to create programs to address problems. That's why successful Democrats such as FDR come up with programs (such as creating the Social Security system), and successful Republicans such as Ronald Reagan come up with ways to end or at least greatly reduce programs (such as defunding public radio and public television). George H. W. Bush's winning pitch wasn't I'll build roads and bridges or I'll upgrade our education system into the finest possible or I'll make sure the hungry are fed and the homeless are housed; it was No new taxes!

Claiming a Democrat will do horrible things is often enough to get right-leaners to vote Republican. Claiming a Republican will do horrible things is often not enough to get left-leaners to vote Democratic. Left-leaners are more inclined to want to be given reasons to vote for someone in order to get them to vote for someone. They are more in need of being inspired to vote than right-leaners, and too many Clinton supporters (and the Clinton campaign) failed to provide that inspiration to the people whose votes they needed and -- in my opinion -- could have won if they had taken an inspiring approach rather than an un-inspiring one.

What I saw online in places such as Daily Kos was many Clinton supporters doing their best to insult and drive away anyone who wasn't already solidly on board with Clinton. Jill Stein was actively insulted, as was anyone considering voting for her -- an approach which was not likely to win potential Stein voters over to voting for Clinton. Bernie Sanders was actively insulted, as were people who had supported Sanders in the primary and were still feeling more inclined to like Sanders' positions than Clinton's -- again, an approach more likely to convince people to sit the election out than to convince people to reward the people insulting them by doing what the insulters wanted.

It used to be widely understood among Democrats that the way to win elections was for the candidate who won the primary to attempt to woo and win the support of those who had opposed them in the primaries. The Democratic assumption in 2016 seemed to be more along the lines that those who supported the winner of the primary had pwned those who supported the loser of the primary and were therefore owed obeisance. That may nowadays be a workable way to win support from Republicans and those who lean Republican (cf Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio) but it's not a good way to win support from Democrats and those who lean Democratic.
 
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