There's a very curious thing going on in our national polling right now: voters are down on Barack Obama and it's looking more likely that there could be a Republican in the White House in 2013. But they're also way down on the Republicans in Congress and Democrats have now led on 11 consecutive PPP generic House ballot polls dating back to February. Could Democrats gain a lot of seats in the House, possibly even a majority, while simultaneously voting out Barack Obama? It would certainly run counter to all historical precedent but these are weird times politically. PPP's newest national poll finds that Americans think even less of the new Republican majority in the House than they thought of the Nancy Pelosi led Democratic majority. 42% of voters think the GOP is doing a worse job than the Democrats did while in power to only 39% who believe they're an improvement. 18% say the new majority's performance is 'about the same' as the old one's.
Democrats lead this month 46-44 on the generic House ballot. That's a 9 point shift from the Republicans' 7 point margin of victory on that measure in November's election and although it might not be enough to give them back control that margin would almost definitely translate to Democrats winning back a lot of the seats that they lost last fall. The GOP does maintain an 8 point advantage with independents at 41-33, but that represents a significant decline from their 19 point victory with them according to last year's exit polls.
John Boehner is not proving to be popular with the American public. 33% of voters approve of the job he's doing to 37% who disapprove, with independents splitting against him by a 34/37 margin almost identical to the overall numbers. He does have one thing going for him though- with Republicans he's at 55/15, suggesting there's not too much opposition to him within the party. We also found on our GOP primary poll earlier this week that 41% of Republican voters have a higher opinion of Boehner to just 18% who picked Eric Cantor so there's not any appetite for a change in leadership at least with the public at large.
The House landscape has shifted dramatically in the last 9 months.
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