Republicans Didn't Get Less Popular After All That Speaker Drama -- They Were Already Unpopular

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The election for speaker of the House may have gripped Washington, D.C., for almost a week earlier this month, but the rest of the country apparently reacted with a big fat shrug.

According to polls, Americans are indifferent about both Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s election and the chaotic process that led to it. Despite what some suggestive surveys might lead you to believe, the GOP revolt against McCarthy doesn’t seem to have turned more Americans off from the Republican Party. But the nation does have low expectations for the next two years of federal governance.

Let’s start with some sexy toplines. (We’ll get to what’s wrong with them in a moment.) Two polls found that a plurality of Americans thought that the drama surrounding the speaker election hurt the GOP. According to a HarrisX/Deseret News poll conducted right after McCarthy’s election, 41 percent of registered voters felt that the Republican Party was weaker after the speaker election, and only 23 percent thought it was stronger. In addition, 43 percent of registered voters told HarrisX/the Deseret News that the ordeal made them trust the Republican Party less. Meanwhile, 34 percent of respondents told Ipsos that the drama weakened the Republican Party, and only 19 percent said it strengthened the party.

In reality, these poll questions don’t tell us that much. We’ve written previously about the dangers of pollsters asking whether a given event makes people more or less likely to vote for a candidate or party. Asking whether the speaker election made people trust the GOP less falls into the same trap. The question allows people to express dissatisfaction with the election without considering where their feelings started on the issue. (For example, quite a few of those people — i.e., Democrats — probably had little or no trust for the GOP to begin with.)

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/republicans-house-speaker-polls/

[republianmushroom]

1. agree

[OverBurn]

2. If they were unpopular they wouldn't control the House, and only narrowly behind in the Senate.

They are still way to popular in a large part of the country. Democrats are just barely hanging on. I don't get it, but it's true.

[WarGamer]

3. And yet... they won the Popular Vote in the House by over a million votes.

I still haven't seen a good post-mortem explaining how they pulled it off.

And before someone says it... gerrymandering doesn't affect HOW someone votes, it affects HOW they're counted, as in counted towards which District.