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President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats learned at least one big lesson in the November elections: What the independent voter gives, the independent voter can also take away. But now, the same temperamental bloc that threw House Democrats out of power appear to be in a giving mood again - at least as far as Obama is concerned. That unpredictable, cranky group of voters who helped carry the president into office two years ago before turning against him in dramatic fashion, may be turning back in Obama’s direction even more quickly. A series of national polls released over the last...

DFL congressman Jim Oberstar, accustomed to winning with 65% or more of the vote in Minnesota's 8th Congressional District, finds himself running even with Republican challenger Chip Cravaack, heading into the final weekend of the campaign, a new SurveyUSA poll conducted for KSTP-TV in Minneapolis shows. Today, it's 47% Oberstar, 46% Cravaack, a result within the survey's theoretical margin of sampling error.

The Democrats' final push to woo undecided voters appears to have fizzled, potentially putting dozens of competitive House races beyond reach and undermining the party's chances in at least four toss-up Senate seats, according to party strategists and officials. Independents, a crucial swing bloc, seem to be breaking sharply for Republicans in the final days of the campaign. One nonpartisan prognosticator, Stuart Rothenberg, said Friday he thought the Republicans could pick up as many as 70 House seats—something no party has achieved since 1948. The Republicans need 39 seats to take the majority. Fading Democratic support among independents is also...

Politico’s new poll reinforces the fact that momentum remains strong with fired-up Republicans, mainly because of fired-up independents.  The numbers look daunting for Democrats with just one week to go before Election Day, and in many places, past the time many have already voted.  And it’s not as though the Democrats didn’t have warnings that their massive expansion of government wouldn’t have dire consequences: Expressing deep dissatisfaction with President Obama’s policies and performance, independents have increasingly sided with conservatives in the belief that government grew too large, too fast under Obama—and that it can no longer be trusted. In the...

Op-ed: As elections loom, US president losing support of once - sympathetic voters In the last elections campaigns, it was possible to point to a political gender-based gap. While men tended to vote Republican, women tended to vote Democrat. Yet the recent polls show that the female vote is also shifting to the Right. Some 52% of women still support the Democrats, yet this marks a sharp drop in the face of the masculine zeal to topple the Left, and Obama knows it. Hence, his West Coast trip is dedicated to meetings with women and efforts to boost two female...

Swing Vote: Newly Dead Now Oppose Obama By Stephen Miller As a Chicago pol, President Barack Obama must be familiar with rumors that the cemeteries vote. If so, he’d probably be worried to find out that in this campaign year, he’s even lost the dead. In death notices from around the nation, the recently deceased are reaching back to canvass the living. “In lieu of flowers, Hal has requested that donations be made to your local animal shelter or to any candidate running against Barack Obama in 2012,” reads the death notice of Harold Groves, a retired Air Force fighter...

Well here is a punch in the stomach to those who pandered to Hispanics over the summer by bashing Arizona and its Republican Governor Jan Brewer for passing the immigration law known as SB 1070. According to the latest report from Gallup, Hispanics have peeled off from Democrats in August and September. Hispanics' Preferences Shift, While Whites' and Blacks' are Stable Hispanic voters' support for Democratic candidates waned in August and September. As a result, Hispanics in September favored Democrats by a 13-point margin (51% to 38%), compared with 32-point margins in June and July. Whites in September favored Republican...

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The college vote is up for grabs this year — to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama. Though many students are liberals on social issues, the economic reality of a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties: far fewer 18- to 29-year-olds now identify themselves as Democrats compared with 2008. “Is the recession, which is hitting young people very hard, doing lasting or permanent damage to what looked like a good Democratic advantage with this age group?”...

As former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner writes, liberals "are expressing deepening alienation from our nation and turning on the American people with a vengeance." They thought they had a mandate from heaven in 2008 and can't bear the thought that they deluded themselves. They've gone from triumphalism to a petulant and uncomprehending tantrum in less than two years. The rump majority looks more exhausted by the day.

WASHINGTON – Independents who embraced President Barack Obama's call for change in 2008 are ready for a shift again, and that's worrisome news for Democrats. Only 32 percent of those citing no allegiance to either major party say they want Democrats to keep control of Congress in this November's elections, according to combined results of recent Associated Press-GfK polls. That's way down from the 52 percent of independents who backed Obama over Republican Sen. John McCain two years ago, and the 49 percent to 41 percent edge by which they preferred Democratic candidates for the House in that election, according...

It was a year ago this month that President Barack Obama began losing voters. In the 12 months since, he has had legislative victories that appear – especially in the case of health care – to have cost him large amounts of both political capital and political support. A comparison of the public’s views of him then and now tells us a great deal about the shape of American politics and how difficult it is for any president, even one as politically gifted as Barack Obama, to surmount the nation’s deep political and ideological divisions. [Snip] On Election Day 2008,...

Sobering poll news for 35 key House members. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she plans to bring health-care reform to a vote this week. Democratic leaders cite national polls that show support for individual provisions of the bill as a reason to pass this reform. Yet vulnerable politicians should be warned: Responses to questions about individual benefits, particularly when removed from a cost context, are different from those on the whole bill. Voters in key congressional districts are clear in their opposition to what they have seen, read and heard on health-care reform. That's one of the findings of a...

STRATFORD -- Republican Laura Hoydick has won the special election for the 120th Assembly District seat recently vacated by Mayor John A. Harkins. Hoydick received 1,949 votes to 1,390 for Democrat Janice Andersen. Hoydick won in all six voting districts with 58 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Andersen

To really appreciate how far the political pendulum has swung, let's check in with Chris Matthews. Two winters ago, the TV host was all atingle about Barack Obama, to the point where "I felt this thrill going up my leg." But last Tuesday night, when a heretofore obscure Republican state legislator named Scott Brown jolted Obama by snatching Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, Matthews was like a puppy on uppers. Before the polls had even closed, he was grooming Brown for immortality: "Does he have a hot hand politically, to run for the nomination for president next time?" But Matthews can...

Democrats' loss in Tuesday's race for a Massachusetts Senate seat is a stark illustration of their collapsing support from independent voters, a phenomenon that's prompting party leaders to revamp their playbook for this year's midterm elections. Independent voters—typically centrist, white and working-class—backed President Barack Obama and the Democrats in 2008. But Massachusetts is now the third Obama-won state in the past three months where independents have swung decisively Republican. Polls in the days leading up to the vote suggested the lead for Republican Scott Brown came about largely because of his advantage among independents over Democrat Martha Coakley. A new...

Massachusetts has long been regarded as a liberal stronghold, but the special election to replace Sen. Edward Kennedy in the US Senate is showing Massachusetts has a more conservative streak as well. State Sen. Scott Brown (R) is proving to be a major challenge for Attorney General Martha Coakley (D), who was heavily favored early in the race; a poll released late Thursday had Mr. Brown leading Ms. Coakley by 4 percentage points. Brown’s success may have to do with his ability to appeal to independent voters in the Bay State – 51 percent of voters here are unenrolled.

Americans are leaving both political parties in large numbers and are identifying themselves as Independents or third-party supporters. The exodus is so large that the share of Independent voters is now bigger than either Democrats or Republicans. That's the key finding from an analysis conducted by IBD/TIPP. The analysis compared party affiliation data from IBD/TIPP polls conducted in the first half of 2009 to the second half of 2009. Each period had more than 5,000 respondents. The share of voters who identify themselves as Democrats dropped from 39% to 35%, and the share of Republicans edged down from 29% to...

Mounting evidence that independent voters have soured on the Democrats is prompting a debate among party officials about what rhetorical and substantive changes are needed to halt the damage. Following serious setbacks with independents in off-year elections earlier this month, White House officials attributed the defeats to local factors and said President Barack Obama sees no need to reposition his own image or the Democratic message. Since then, however, a flurry of new polls makes clear that Democrats are facing deeper problems with independents—the swing voters who swung dramatically toward the party in 2006 and 2008 but who now are...

Yesterday's election showed many cracks developing in the alliance that put the Democrats into power just one year ago. Independent voters were the most obvious but there were others, while still voting democratic young and urban voters were not motivated to come out for Obama's candidates, especially in New Jersey the state where the POTUS invested the most time and political capital. The other group shifting away from the Obama coalition is suburbia. Already facing growing property taxes, they see a federal government with no inclination to curb spending and the higher taxes the deficits will bring. According to Karl...

Even a five-point shift would mean big Democratic losses in 2010. Tuesday's elections should put a scare into red state Democrats—and a few blue state ones, too. Barack Obama was said to have redrawn the electoral map by winning Virginia last year with 53% of the vote. On Tuesday, Republican Bob McDonnell flipped the state back to the GOP, winning his election for governor with 59% of the vote. Mr. Obama carried New Jersey easily last year with 57% of the vote. This year, despite being outspent 3-to-1, Republican Chris Christie ousted Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine there by 49% to...

Here is video of liberal Juan Williams talking about President Obama's falling poll numbers, which he says is being fueled by a loss of independents. Williams says it's too early to tell if this loss is permanent, but if it is, he says Obama is in "for a really rough ride." (Watch Video)

This is the first time this indicator has gone negative.

Either indies have suddenly developed a taste for Nazi mobs of political terrorists or the Democrats’ message war on ObamaCare opponents is a rather epic fail. Given the left’s monopoly on wisdom and virtue, I must reluctantly conclude it’s the former. When did independents start hating America? In a survey of 1,000 adults taken Tuesday, 34% say the sometimes heated protests at sessions held by members of Congress have made them more sympathetic to the protesters’ views; 21% say they are less sympathetic. Independents by 2-1, 35%-16%, say they are more sympathetic to the protesters now. The findings are bad...

Protests at Town Halls Have Succeeded in Fueling Opposition Among AmericansThe raucous protests at congressional town hall meetings have succeeded in fueling opposition to proposed health care bills among some Americans, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds — particularly the independents who tend to be at the center of political debates. In a survey of 1,000 adults taken Tuesday, 34% say the sometimes heated protests at sessions held by members of Congress have made them more sympathetic to the protesters' views; 21% say they are less sympathetic. Independents by 2-1, 35%-16%, say they are more sympathetic to the protesters now. The...

New poll from Quinnipiac University (August 5 – 9, 1,301 RV, MoE +/- 2.7 %) shows President Obama's approval rating slipping to 56%, a five point decline from last month and down from his high of 68% in June. As you might expect, Republican and Democratic attitudes about Obama are already fixed, so Obama's job rating decline in New Jersey this month is driven entirely by defections among Independent voters. As you can see from the graphic below, Obama has lost a net of 19 points in his job rating with Independents in the last month, and is upside down...

Barack Obama and congressional Democrats won big on Tuesday night, but they should not mistake their victory for a big-government mandate. The evidence tells a very different story. A poll commissioned by the Club for Growth in 12 swing congressional districts over the past weekend shows that the voters who made the difference in this election still prefer less government -- lower taxes, less spending and less regulation -- to Sen. Obama's economic liberalism. Turns out, Americans didn't vote for Mr. Obama and Democratic congressional candidates because they support their redistributionist agenda, but because they are fed up with the...

Day 21: IBD/TIPP Tracking Poll The race tightened again Sunday as independents who'd been leaning to Obama shifted to McCain to leave that key group a toss-up. McCain also pulled even in the Midwest, moved back into the lead with men, padded his gains among Protestants and Catholics, and is favored for the first time by high school graduates.

The race tightened again Sunday as independents who'd been leaning to Obama shifted to McCain to leave that key group a toss-up. McCain also pulled even in the Midwest, moved back into the lead with men, padded his gains among Protestants and Catholics, and is favored for the first time by high school graduates.

Steve Marcus Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee, poses with supporters Tuesday in Henderson at a rally that produced a change in the candidate’s tone.*********************************************** Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin unveiled a new stump speech before a crowd of thousands at the Henderson Pavilion, appealing directly to women and softening her overall tone. “It’s about time we shattered that glass ceiling once and for all,” said Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. And the chant went up: “Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!” Palin offered a range of women- and family-friendly policy proposals not usually heard from Republican candidates. She called for...

PARK RIDGE, Ill., Oct 17, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- A new survey by management consulting firm George S. May International shows 62 percent of small business owners said they would cross party lines this year to vote for the U.S. presidential candidate that they feel will do the most to help their business. A poll of 850 small business owners across the United States found that nearly half said they feel their business is in jeopardy with 56 percent saying the current credit crunch has adversely impacted their business: -- 23 percent cited late-paying customers and vendors -- 14 percent...

Barack Obama has taken a slight lead with white independent voters for the first time in the presidential race, positioning him to capture a key demographic group that has eluded recent Democratic nominees, according to a Politico analysis of independent voting patterns. According to Gallup’s weekly average of some 6,400 registered voters, Obama now holds a 45 percent-43 percent edge over Republican John McCain with white independents. About eight in 10 independents are white. Should Obama’s support hold, he is positioned to become the first Democrat to win white independents in a two-man race since the advent of exit polling....

An evangelist and Middle East expert believes a substantial number of Jewish voters in the U.S. will vote for John McCain because they are deeply concerned about a Barack Obama presidency. Tom Doyle serves as the Middle East director for the strategic church-planting ministry e3 Partners, and recently released his new book Two Nations Under God: Why You Should Care About Israel. Not only does Doyle believe the people of Israel are nervous about a possible Barack Obama presidency, he believes a growing number of Jewish voters in the America feel the same. GOP and Democratic logos"Jews who live in...

4,134 cast ballots for president Saturday, October 4, 2008 3:20 AM By Mark Niquette THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Ohio State University student Lauren Slutzky didn't want to risk having to wait for hours in a long line to vote on Election Day. Eddie Booker, 68, of Columbus, has never voted before but wanted to be a part of history this year. Both are among the thousands of Franklin County residents who went to Veterans Memorial during the opening days of early absentee voting this week, getting registered if they weren't on the rolls and casting ballots for the Nov. 4 election....

He said he would involve former Vice President Al Gore in efforts to address the issue. "I would tap him, I would tap people who have been involved in these issues for many years." McCain noted that he disagreed with the Nobel Peace Prize winner about nuclear energy but added, "I have great respect for Al Gore."

Washington, Sept 27: If one goes by a poll conducted minutes after Friday night's debate between Republican candidate John McCain and his Democrat opponent Barack Obama last night, the former is seen garnering more uncommitted voters than the latter. 46 percent of voters surveyed said their opinion of Obama got better tonight, while 32 percent said their opinion of McCain got better, reported cbsnews.com. The poll was conducted on over 500 voters, who haven't yet decided who they would vote for and also those who have chosen a candidate but may still change their minds. 39 percent of uncommitted voters...

Pamela Brown came to see the equation-changer for herself. She is a musician, teacher, and JFK assassination buff from Eden Prairie who stood in the mob at Friday's John McCain-Sarah Palin rally at an airplane hangar in Blaine. Brown said she shifted from the Democratic side to 'undecided' when McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, named Palin, the Alaska governor, as his running mate. "She changed the equation,'' said Brown, who said she voted Democratic in the last two presidential elections but also has "a brick with my name on it in the Reagan library." She sees Palin as a refreshing...

Observant Catholics are returning to the Republican fold now that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has joined the GOP ticket - a shift that looks to be more enduring than a postconvention bounce. If the trend sticks, it will mark a partial setback for Democrats and the Obama campaign, who have vied vigorously for the pivotal votes of Roman Catholics. Before the national political conventions, presidential contenders Barack Obama and John McCain were about splitting the votes of white Catholics who attend church weekly. That was a weak showing for the GOP's Senator McCain; in 2004, President Bush carried this group...

Jessica Goral had pretty much made up her mind two weeks ago: she was going to vote for Barack Obama. Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running-mate. “She empowers a lot of women,” said Mrs Goral, a mother of two in Macomb County – a national bellwether in the battleground state of Michigan and an area rich in white, working-class swing voters who will play an important role in deciding the election in November. “I like that she’s a brand new mother, and that she has the courage to stand behind her pregnant daughter. She relates to working...

NASCAR on Ice: Every election, pollsters and pundits introduce another voter group whose views are certain to decide the outcome: soccer moms, NASCAR dads, security moms, office park dads, and (three times in the past week) Wal-Mart moms. These categories, while sometimes useful, share an important methodological flaw: On Election Day, when undecided voters finally make up their minds, exit pollsters don't ask them where they work or where they shop, what sports they watch or what games their children play. Exit polls eschew these trendy questions in favor of boring demographic perennials like age, race, gender, education, and income...

Following is the speech that Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democrats' candidate for vice president in 2000, prepared for delivery to the Republican Convention on Tuesday night.Thank you for that warm welcome. I am honored to be here. We meet tonight in the wake of a terrible storm that has hit the Gulf Coast but that hurts all of us, because we are all members of our larger American family. At times like this, we set aside all that divides us, and we come together to help our fellow citizens in need. What matters is certainly not whether we are Democrats...

DENVER — Ian Bowman-Henderson scraped together $300 — cashing in his high school graduation checks — to pay for a round-trip plane ticket from Cincinnati to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. But as the week wore on, he said he was not sure if the money had been well spent. Mr. Bowman-Henderson, 19, and some other young voters who were part of the nucleus of Mr. Obama’s presidential bid said the convention process had left them marginalized as more centrist views on issues like offshore drilling took hold. “We understand the politics of compromise and that Senator Obama has...

Barack Obama has problems with Jewish seniors in Florida, say two Democratic lawmakers there. Florida state Sen. Nan Rich told JTA that Obama surrogates have been “shocked” by the hostility they have encountered at condominiums in her area aimed at their candidate. Steve Geller, who serves as the Democratic minority leader in the Florida state Senate and represents parts of Broward County, said he was nearly chased out of the "condos" -- shorthand for retirement communities -- when he said he backed Obama. "I've noticed almost a mob mentality," Geller said. "I can change people's minds in a group of...

Barack Obama will lose the November election to John McCain unless he overhauls his message of change, outlines specific plans and reassures Americans that he is one of them, according to swing voters in Denver. The results of a focus group held by Frank Luntz, the leading American pollster, on the eve of the Democratic convention should sound alarm bells for the Obama campaign after a month in which Mr McCain, the Republican, has drawn level in the polls. "The way that he gets here to the Democratic nomination - 'change' - is not how he gets there, to the...

Sen. John McCain reminded Pennsylvanians Tuesday that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama said the state's small-town voters "cling to guns and religion" because they are "bitter," a gaffe that possibly contributed to Mr. Obama's loss in the state primary and might haunt his general election campaign in this battleground. Mr. McCain told a town hall meeting that this state's voters are the "heartland," and "beam of hope and liberty for everyone in the world." His reprise of the "bitter" flap - an off-the-cuff remark made by Mr. Obama at a private fundraising event in San Francisco prior to...

Here is the latest ad from the McCain camp. Pretty effective I think using the words of leading Dems to praise McCain. The best part comes at the end from Hillary, "I know Senator McCain has a life time of experience that he will bring to the White House and Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." Ouch. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSpcxkKlEFA

Sen. Barack Obama is doing what Republicans once thought only a presidential candidacy by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton could do - uniting the right and center. State Republican Party leaders interviewed by The Washington Times said fear of a far-left Obama presidency is warming once-skeptical voters to Sen. John McCain, fueling growing enthusiasm among Republicans that Mr. McCain's more aggressive campaigning can lead to victory...

Barack Obama has a Catholic problem. If he doesn't do better than John Kerry did in 2004 with this quintessential swing voting bloc, he won't be elected president. Obama's campaign understands this -- which is why they're considering allowing a pro-life Democrat, Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, to speak at the Denver convention. Sen. Casey's father, the late Governor of Pennsylvania Robert Casey Sr., was denied a speaking slot at the Democrats' 1992 convention for fear of offending pro-choice Democrats. But simply allowing his son to speak at the convention won't be enough to woo Catholics back. Catholics are by...

In an effort to highlight his "maverick" history of bipartisianship, John McCain has released this campaign ad. The ad features prominent democratic leaders praising McCain for his courage, honesty, and ability to reach across the aisle. http://election.newsmax.com/mccain_praise.html?s=al&promo_code=6772-1

Notwithstanding the hype about Barack Obama, here is where the presidential race stands: John McCain was within an average of 1.9% of his Democratic opponent in last week's daily Gallup tracking poll. It shouldn't be this close. Sen. Obama should be way ahead. It's not that Sen. McCain has made up a lot of ground. Pollster.com shows that the Republican steadily declined from March through June as the Democratic contest dominated the news. Mr. McCain stabilized in July, and then ticked up slightly. But the most important political fact of July is that Mr. Obama has lost altitude. Gallup now...

Is Kelsey Grammar really a Republican? Hard to tell, since he chose to be in "Swing Vote" and portray Republicans as anti-Semites and White men as rednecks, idiots, and incompetent fathers. You know when a movie about a Presidential election begins with an anti-Semitic Republican President scheming on how to keep Jews away from the polls, it's not going to be even-handed or good. Or funny. You also know that when the star of a movie--Kevin Costner--is forced to invest $20 million of his own money in an August movie release in order to get it on-screen, it's not a...