Poll: Republican voters fired up

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

A political enthusiasm gap is helping Republicans in their effort to roll up big gains in the congressional elections. GOP supporters are a lot more interested in getting their party’s candidates elected than Democrats are in electing theirs, a new AP-GfK poll shows.

Democrats struggling to defend their control of Congress have lucked out in one way: Republicans are at least as unpopular as they are, the poll shows. Yet GOP voters are more fired up, leaving the Democrats little more than a month to energize their supporters.

How? They’re using President Barack Obama and his Cabinet. Al Gore, too. And until Election Day dawns Nov. 2, the Democrats will try to refocus voters from their anger over the stubbornly limp economy to the risks of putting Republicans in charge on Capitol Hill.

It’s a common theme: A TV ad by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accuses his GOP opponent of a proposal that is “not just extreme, that’s dangerous,” while one by Rep. Larry Kissell, D-N.C., says his challenger would shield tax breaks for companies that ship American jobs overseas.

“There’s a level of frustration the American people have that we understand and that obviously Democrats are trying to address,” said party spokesman Brad Woodhouse. “But I haven’t run into anybody who says they want to go back to the fall of 2008,” when Republicans held the White House.

Also helping Democrats round up votes will be their traditional labor-union allies, who plan to spend nearly $100 million helping the party’s candidates.

Republicans, energized by tea-party fervor and capitalizing on frustration over the sluggish economy, are tailoring their campaign strategy to reflect concerns about job losses and government growth under Obama as he fought a recession and won a battle to revamp the country’s health-care system.

The Associated Press-GfK Poll this month shows that the public is fed up with both parties. Only 38 percent approve of how congressional Democrats are handling their jobs, and just 31 percent like how Republicans are doing theirs. Fifty-nine percent are unhappy with how Democrats are nursing the economy, 64 percent are upset by the GOP’s work on the country’s top issue.

More than half have negative views of each party. Most say Obama isn’t cooperating enough on the economy, but even more accuse Republicans of the same thing. And former President George W. Bush and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — the only two Republicans the AP-GfK Poll tested — are significantly less popular than Obama.