POLITICO poll: Alarm, anxiety as election looms

POLITICO poll: Alarm, anxiety as election looms

By ALEXANDER BURNS | 10/20/14

An overwhelming majority of voters in the most competitive 2014 elections say it feels as if events in the United States are “out of control” and expressed mounting alarm about terrorism, anxiety about Ebola and harsh skepticism of both political parties only three weeks before the Nov. 4 midterms.

In a POLITICO poll testing the hardest-fought states and congressional districts of the year, two-thirds of likely voters said they feel that the United States has lost control of its major challenges. Only 36 percent said the country is “in a good position to meet its economic and national security” hurdles.

If no individual issue has come to define this election — like health care in the 2010 campaign or the Iraq War in 2006 — the accumulation of disparate fears has created a sense of pessimism and frustration across the midterm landscape.

The public distress manifests itself across a range of issues:

- Terrorism: Eighty-four percent of voters say the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant poses a “serious” threat to the U.S. homeland, including 43 percent who say it poses a “very serious” threat. Just 12 percent said the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is not a serious concern.

- Health care: Most voters believe their health care costs will go up under the Affordable Care Act. Fifty-seven percent said they believe their personal costs will increase, while only 7 percent said they will decrease. A third said their costs would remain the same. (At the same time, support for repealing Obamacare has continued to drop, now down to 41 percent.)

- Presidential management: Voters in the midterm battleground states are evenly split on whether President Barack Obama or George W. Bush was more effective at managing the federal government. Thirty-eighty percent named Bush, while 35 percent preferred Obama. A quarter of respondents said the two men were equally competent.

- Ebola: Only 22 percent of respondents said they had a lot of confidence that the government is doing everything it can to contain the contagious disease. Thirty-nine percent they had some confidence, while a third said they had little or no confidence. The poll concluded Oct. 11, before the hospitalization of the second nurse who treated an Ebola patient in Dallas.

Virginia voter Amaris Landecho, 33, said her main concerns this year were largely about the “economy and the housing market” until Ebola came along, raising questions about “whether the government is prepared to handle issues like this.”

“My mind tells me they are not prepared for this, but my heart is filled with hope that they are,” said Landecho, who works at a military hospital and expects to vote Democratic. She added: “I’m upset with Congress — the whole thing, Democrat or Republican. It doesn’t matter.”

Charlene Pierson, a retired church secretary in Michigan, said she thinks the Ebola scare is “very, very hyped up,” but has concerns about Obama’s leadership style overall. “The man has spent most of his time not knowing what’s going on in his own government, and he’s supposed to be commander in chief,” said Pierson, 68, who plans to vote Republican.

The atmosphere of fear and anxiety has not produced a decisive advantage for either party on the congressional ballot. Forty-four percent of voters said they would vote for Democrats next month, while 41 percent said they preferred Republicans. That represents a tiny shift in the Democratic direction since POLITICO’s last poll, in early September, well within the margin of error.

The new poll, designed by SocialSphere Inc. and conducted by the research firm GfK, tested 840 likely voters in competitive U.S. House and Senate races. The poll was conducted online using GfK’s KnowledgePanel methodology, which is also employed by The Associated Press. The poll ran from Oct. 3 to 11 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Republicans appear likely to prevail in many of the hardest-fought races of the year and stand a good chance of taking control of the Senate. In the bigger picture, however, there is little to indicate that the GOP has rehabilitated itself in the eyes of voters since its setbacks in the 2012 presidential election.

The Republican Party continue to trail heavily among young and nonwhite voters, losing Hispanics by 25 points, African-Americans by 74 points, women by 5 points and every age group of voters under 65.

But the GOP maintains important leads among whites (12 points), voters over 65 (12 points) and men (4 points) — advantages that are likely to prove decisive on a midterm electoral map tilted toward less diverse and more conservative states in the South and Mountain West.

Voters disapprove of congressional Republicans by a 40-point margin, 70 percent to 30 percent, including 38 percent who strongly disapprove of the Hill GOP. For Democrats, the numbers are only a bit better: 61 percent disapprove and 38 percent approve.

Asked which party is closer to big business and Wall Street, 39 percent of respondents said it was Republicans versus only 9 percent who said it was the Democrats. Fifty-one percent said both parties were equally close to big business and the financial sector.

Malcolm Carter, a retired schoolteacher in Kentucky, said he planned to vote Republican — and support Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for another term — as “the lesser of two evils.” “I think the Democratic Party is leading us down a road that we can never recover from,” said Carter, 73. “Not that Mitch McConnell is my favorite.”

While the economy and other domestic issues still reign supreme, voters have shifted their attention noticeably toward national security since POLITICO began polling the midterm battleground races earlier this year.

In May, half of likely voters named economic issues as their chief concerns, while only 6 percent named national security, foreign affairs or terrorism.

Now, those numbers are 40 percent for the economy and 22 percent for national security, foreign affairs and terrorism.

And the same pool of voters that expressed intense resistance to U.S. military intervention overseas in a July POLITICO poll now say they are more concerned about terrorism against the homeland (60 percent) than the possibility of another “drawn-out U.S. war in Iraq” (39 percent.)

Elizabeth Ivey, an insurance agent in Panama City Beach, Florida, said she feels that national security issues have become “a constant” in U.S. politics. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another that’s coming up,” said Ivey, 48, who intends to vote Republican. “I am worried about ISIS; I think it’s something that we need to keep over, away from our country. I do support us going over there and fighting in the Middle East.”