Rasmussen And The Quietly Rusting Democratic Advantage.
May 12, 2009 4 Comments ›› Erik Wong
The chart is hard to decipher as it didn’t translate well from the original. Go to Redstate and you can see the original and its intended significance much better.
Posted by Moe Lane
Examining Rasmussen’s trust-on-issues numbers from month to month is interesting enough, but I was interested in the long term trends. So I put together this chart comparing this month’s numbers with those of last October’s*:
October 2008 May 2009
Issue Dem GOP Diff Dem GOP Diff Cum Shift
Economy 51% 38% 13 44% 43% 1 (12)
Govt Ethics 40% 30% 10 40% 29% 11 1
National Sec. 47% 44% 3 41% 48% (7) (10)
Education 53% 34% 19 49% 36% 13 (6)
Healthcare 54% 34% 20 53% 35% 18 (2)
Taxes 47% 42% 5 41% 47% (6) (11)
Iraq 47% 42% 5 41% 43% (2) (7)
Social Security 49% 37% 12 48% 39% 9 (3)
Abortion 47% 38% 9 41% 41% - (9)
As you can see, back in October it was fairly clear that Democrats were enjoying consistent leads over Republicans when it came to how much the public trusted them on various issues. It’s also fairly clear that in most cases, those leads have been savaged. Leading in four categories and tied in one may not sound wonderful; but compared to zero-for-ten that’s not half bad – particularly since it’s looking as if the Democrats are in the process of thoroughly squandering their existing trustworthiness with regard to the economy. The only real disappointment is the government trust numbers (which were much better last month**), but that’s the next project.
What does it mean? Not much, except of course as a helpful reminder that the people who are currently eager to tell you that we’re doomed as a party are not necessarily working from completely accurate data. Hardly surprising: most of those people don’t have your best interests at heart. Or any of your interests at heart, really.
Moe Lane
*It’s really the one that we’re all interested in, given that it’s more or less at the zenith of the Democrats’ popularity.
**This month’s and last month’s numbers in general were pretty volatile.
