Charles Franklin has up the most recent trend estimates for his Presidential Approval estimator and it’s at 29.1 percent. Wow. There’s some interesting patterns to the different estimators as well. The blue (less sensitive) has been tracking the red (more sensitive) for the recent downturn pretty faithfully. That’s not unusual and certainly doesn’t tell us how long that will last, but interesting nonetheless.
Charles is interested in public opinion by itself though he has done some great work on how that interacts with institutions. What fascinates me most though is how elite opinion including officeholders seems to be lagging. This isn’t a new phenomenon for the Bush Presidency since he’s been below 40 for sometime now, however one would expect Republicans to be running for cover from this guy, yet he’s still able to maintain strong control over the legislative process and especially Republicans in Congress.
Now, one theory is that the base is vital to all Republicans and he is still popular with the base and that is somewhat true, but now that seems to be less true at least. While we see some grumbling, Members of Congress like Mark Kirk should be running scared. They really aren’t and this to me is a puzzle. A key assumption of the literature is that MoCs are single-minded seekers of reelection and as such party discipline isn’t that strong because MoCs see their best chance for reelection to run as individuals to avoid waves. Everything about the current political situation suggests a second Democratic wave election and perhaps even a stronger one yet elected Republicans are maintaining a remarkable level of party discipline. Many do not face primaries and certainly not primaries of any importance so this level of party discipline is fascinating to watch.