The GOP Plan Is Failing

Over at HuffPo, Thomas Edsall dissects The GOP Plan as what it is: the "white voter strategy".

The appeal of the anti-Obama agenda has proven to be particularly strong among whites of low and moderate incomes. The Pew Center, tracking evaluations of Obama's job performance, found in a July 30 report that there "has been essentially no shift in opinion among affluent whites [but] among whites with annual family incomes of less than $75,000, Obama's approval ratings have declined substantially (from 57% in June to 47% today). Assessments of Obama's performance remain high among African Americans (85%)."

ABC News polling similarly found in late June that the possible costs to consumers of cap-and-trade legislation "are particularly important to less well-off Americans. Among those making less than $50,000 a year, support for regulating greenhouse gas emissions drops by 17 points (from 75 percent to a still-majority 58 percent) if it raises prices; support if it costs $10 a month is 49 percent; and at $25, just 35 percent."

The trend lines reported by Gallup are perhaps the most striking: At the start of this year, during late January, Gallup found that Obama's job approval ratings stood at 63 percent among whites, 86 percent among African Americans, and 74 percent among Hispanics. In the Gallup survey taken in late July, Obama had gained 9 points among blacks, reaching 95 percent job approval, and was holding his own among Hispanics, dropping a statistically insignificant 2 points to 72 percent.

Among white respondents, however, he had dropped 16 points to 47 percent.

These findings are reinforced by recent trend lines emerging in the Wall Street Journal/NBC polling series.

In that series, the decline has been sharpest among white men, whose approval-disapproval ratio fell by 27 points, from 50-36 to 40-53.

So the race-based attacks are working against white voters, particularly white men and especially white men in the South. But the cost of the GOP refusing to come up with any new ideas of their own is high: it's driving minorities more towards the Democrats.

The GOP is convinced that it can gain enough white voters to cancel out the minority surge, so the attacks continue. But the latest Gallup poll on state party affiliations is dismal news for the GOP.

An analysis of Gallup Poll Daily tracking data from the first six months of 2009 finds Massachusetts to be the most Democratic state in the nation, along with the District of Columbia. Utah and Wyoming are the most Republican states, as they were in 2008. Only four states show a sizeable Republican advantage in party identification, the same number as in 2008. That compares to 29 states plus the District of Columbia with sizeable Democratic advantages, also unchanged from last year.

In other words, the GOP hasn't gained any ground at all from an electoral college standpoint, and may have even lost ground. Take a look at the Gallup poll map:

Not good. The GOP at this point only has a double digit advantage in four states, the Democrats have double digit advantages in twenty-nine states. Those numbers are the same as last year, meaning that by and large while the GOP Plan has stopped the bleeding, the balance of power still strongly favors the Democrats. Right now, the traditional "Big 3 Battleground" states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida are in the Dems' column, along with major states like California, New York, and Illinois. At this point the Dems are winning in a number of Southern and Mountain West states too.

What happened is that the GOP leaner states have now become toss-ups. The competitive states now are ones like Texas and Arizona, who just 5 years ago were solid GOP bulwarks. Even Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and Mississippi are in play now. The GOP is losing its firewall states.

It's not working. They are losing as many minority votes and independents as they are gaining in disaffected white voters. They are treading water after being hit by the tsunami, and they are still far from shore. At this point, the GOP doesn't have a prayer.

The GOP Plan has been singular in purpose for the last 12 months: Destroy Obama. Surprise! It's not working.