Voter Poll's Leadership Question Deals Blow to Democratic Party
The Democratic Party is perceived by many voters as leaderless, according to the results of a new poll that comes barely five months before the decisive midterm elections.
According to a CBS/YouGov poll that was released Sunday, 45 percent of respondents picked “There isn’t one” from a series of possible choices to indicate the party’s leader.
When it came to actual people, support was scattered, The Daily Caller reported.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York topped the poll’s responses at 16 percent. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California received 15 percent.
The poll offered both major 2016 Democrat presidential candidates as possible leaders. Thirteen percent of the poll’s respondents named Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont as the party’s leader. Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 election to President Donald Trump, was last, with only 7 percent saying she was the party’s leader.
Respondents were asked if the leader was someone not on the list, but only 4 percent picked that choice.
Of those polled, 44 percent were Democrats and another 14 percent were independent.
The poll, which forecast a tight battle for control of the House of Representatives, found that the dynamics of voting diffe greatly by party enrollment.
Democrat respondents said they are mostly planning to vote to oppose the Republicans who now control both chambers of Congress and the White House rather than in support of Democrat candidates.
From the Republican side, voters said they will be coming out in November to support the president and their party, not to oppose whatever Democrats might be saying.
Some brand the Democrats as weak on the core issue of the economy.
“(T)he party as such makes virtually no attempt to put forward a consistent party line on economic issues,” commentator Ryan Cooper wrote in The Week. “This lack of ideological spade work is setting the party up for disaster down the road.”
Democrat pollster Tom Schoen wrote recently that the Democratic Party is badly split.
“Democrats lack an agenda,” he wrote on Fox News. “The party, deeply split between its progressive and moderate wings, is divided on both message and tactics. This puts the party at risk not only at the ballot box, but in Republican-controlled state legislatures and governor’s offices throughout the country, with redistricting occurring after the 2020 census.”
He also wrote that the 2018 elections offer an opportunity, but only if the Democrats change their course.
“If Democrats don’t want to squander their first real opportunity at controlling the House since 2010 — and likely their best shot for the foreseeable future — they must deliver a change in leadership, a change in policies, and a movement back to the moderate, inclusive message that won them control of government in the 1990s and the early 2000s,” Schoen said.
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