Over the weekend, I attended the annual Western CPAC gathering of California’s conservatives, and had the privilege to hear national independent pollster Scott Rasmussen speak about the upcoming 2010 Elections.
With just two weeks to go until an historic Election Day, his comments were more interesting than ever.
According to Rasmussen’s polling, Republicans are set to take control of the House, and are close (48-46) to taking the Senate. He said they have now placed six U.S. Senate seats as "toss-ups" — seats which normally trend Democrat in the blue states, but ones that Dems are having a tough time holding onto. One of those seats is the race between Carly Fiorina and California’s dismal trillion-dollar-tax-increaser Barbara Boxer.
Rasmussen also shared general voter attitudes heading into the Elections. A solid 50% of Americans now believe their home is not worth the mortgage paper it was written on; and the majority of voters now believe "cutting taxes, cutting spending, and reducing the deficits" are all good for the economy. He also said that 70% of voters don’t believe government spends money wisely (no big surprise there), and the majority of Americans now believe that "big government" and (somewhat surprising) "big business" are now "working against us." You can read more about that at Rasmussen Reports: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/.
Of course, he couldn’t address the 2010 Elections without mentioning the Tea Party movement. Rasmussen said the label "Tea Party" has, hands-down, generated the most attention this year but that it is a double-edged sword, receiving the greatest dichotomy of positive and negative extremes.
To that end, Rasmussen had an admonition for the conservatives gathered at the dinner: don’t assume that Republican wins across the country equate to an unfettered endorsement of Republican candidates nor plans. He cautioned that voters are looking for someone — anyone — who will cut spending, lower taxes, and return to a nation "that is governed by consent of the people." I’m happy to report that Republicans in California are already wisely living that message, and hopefully will run with it all the way to the end zone in these final 15 days before November 2.