That ABC/WaPo Poll Is Even Worse For Dems Than It Looks

Pretty much the only thing on Twitter this morning is a new ABC News/Washington Post poll that shows President Obama skidding to a dismal 41/52 approval/disapproval score. The poll contains other bad news for Democrats, e.g., by 53%-39%, respondents say it is more important to have Republicans in Congress to check Obama’s agenda than Democrats to support it. And the numbers on Obamacare are bad.

Still, there are bright spots for the Democrats in the poll. Respondents give Democrats the edge on most issues, including the economy. By a wide 52%-32% margin, respondents say Democrats will do a better job of helping the middle class. And despite the earlier finding about “checking” Obama’s agenda, the Dems lead the GOP on the generic preference question by a slight 45-44.

But here is the thing: these results are actually much worse than they appear, because the ABC/WaPo poll grossly over-sampled Democrats. This is the last question in the survey:

ABCPoll0481

No one thinks that 11 percent more Democrats than Republicans will go to the polls in November. Most party preference polls are running around even these days, and probably about an equal number of self-described Republicans as Democrats will vote in November. At most, the Democrats could be +2 or +3. So if you take all of the numbers in the ABC/WaPo poll and shift them several points, at a minimum, in the GOP’s direction, what you see is the potential for a wipeout that could equal or exceed what happened in 2010.

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