Impact of midterm elections? Most Americans bet on gridlock

By JANE SASSEEN
Yahoo! News

If there was one thing American voters made abundantly clear on Nov. 2, it's how unhappy they are with politicians and the way things work — or more often don't work — in Washington. Survey after survey has shown that the majority of voters want their elected representatives to do a much better job of coming together to solve the country's problems.

So will things improve after the "shellacking" that voters gave to Democrats in handing control of the House over to the Republicans?

Few Americans appear to be counting on it. In a new ABC News/Yahoo! News poll, most say they have little expectation that things will get better as a result of the recent midterms. Respondents were asked if they thought the election was more likely to move the country in the right direction or the wrong direction. The largest chunk of respondents, some 40 percent, said they didn't expect the election to make a difference at all. Only one-third of those polled, 34 percent, thought the results would move the country in the right direction, while another 21 percent said they thought things were headed the wrong way.

An even more telling sign: a whopping 81 percent thought that gridlock — in which the two political parties cannot agree and thus don't pass any meaningful legislation — is likely to occur in the two years leading up to the next presidential election.

If the three weeks since the election are any guide, they look to be dead right.

"The idea that there will be any kind of bipartisan cooperation is naïve," says Greg Valliere, chief political strategist for Potomac Research Group. "Both parties are purging moderates who have had the temerity to compromise; we've never seen such a vacuum in the center."

Already, Republican congressional leaders have very publicly avoided setting a date to meet with President Obama in the White House. They've also refused to back the START nuclear-arms-control treaty with Russia, despite support from prominent Republicans such as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The moves, says Valliere, were widely seen as signs that GOP leaders are unwilling to agree to any deals that might potentially help Obama.

But two can play that game, and the Democrats are jumping in as well. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he'll soon schedule several votes on what to do about the expiring Bush tax cuts for middle-class and wealthy taxpayers, though they have no chance of passing. Instead, they appear designed to put Republicans on the spot and create fodder for campaign ads that can be used to bash them come 2012.

If gridlock is the order of the day, however, Americans are far less in agreement over whether that's good or bad. By large majorities, registered voters who are Democrats or independents tend to see it in a negative light: some 67 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents say that they believe gridlock is a bad thing, as it will keep good legislation from being passed.

By contrast, a hefty share of Republican registered voters have a positive view of gridlock. Some 43 percent of GOP respondents said they thought gridlock was a good thing, because it means bad legislation fails. That's roughly the same number of Republican registered voters, at 42 percent, who think that gridlock is bad.

What accounts for the difference? Republican and Democratic strategists alike say it's a reflection of the deep unhappiness many Republicans have felt about where the country is headed under Obama — and their willingness to do whatever it takes to reverse course.

"Republicans have been far less happy with the direction of the country, even more so than independents," says Jon McHenry, a partner in Ayers, McHenry & Associates, a prominent Republican polling and strategy firm. For many angry GOP voters, he argues, the aim is to stop the Democrats from doing any more harm. "Even if that takes the form of gridlock, that's fine," he adds.

The numbers underscore the difficulties ahead for President Obama as the White House regroups and attempts to redefine an agenda on which it can find some middle ground with the newly empowered Republicans in Congress. Given the Democrats' much diminished strength, that will be difficult. Moreover, having been amply rewarded at the polls for largely refusing to go along with Obama's priorities for the past two years, many GOP leaders see little reason to change course.

"The overwhelming majority of Republican voters believe their leaders should be trying to stop Barack Obama," says Stanley Greenberg, a prominent Democratic pollster who, along with consultant James Carville, founded the advisory group Democracy Corps to provide polling and strategic messaging for Democratic candidates. As the new Congress gets under way and the jockeying for the 2012 presidential race begins, Greenberg adds, "We're going to see a Republican party that will be in a rush to find out how to stop Obama from being president."

Yet if those feelings helped propel the GOP to electoral victory, they also contain potential peril for Republicans. Their own voters may see the election as providing a mandate to block the Democrats at every turn and replace them with conservative policies, but the independent voters who will be critical in the 2012 presidential election appear far less convinced.

In the ABC News/Yahoo! News poll, Republican registered voters were twice as likely, at 68 percent, to say that the country is now headed in the right direction, as were independent voters, at 34 percent. And voters who think the country is headed in the right direction are even more favorably disposed to gridlock: 51 percent of them see it as a positive, while 34 percent see it as a negative. Few independent registered voters, by contrast, share that view. Only 28 percent of them say it is a good thing.

Analysts warn that if Republicans go too far in blocking Obama in order to keep their own base happy, they could quickly lose the newfound support of those independents.

In turning to Republican candidates in the midterms elections, the independents had very different motivations from party members, says Daniel Clifton, the head of Washington policy research for Strategas Research Partners.

"Republican voters are trying to stop Obama's overreach. Independents are trying to fix problems," he says. He argues that independents gave Republicans a shot at fixing the country's problems in the last decade; when they failed, voters turned to the Democrats, who've let them down too. "Now, with a more Republican Congress and Obama as president, they've said try again," Clifton says. "Voters don't want gridlock. They want the economy fixed. And if they don't get that, they will vote out whoever is in power once more."

For Republican leaders, the risk is in coming off as obstructing the Democrats simply for the sake of obstruction — a risk many say they are keenly aware of. And with Republicans now in control of the House, a strategy of just saying no may no be longer enough.

"The challenge for Republicans is to promote their own policies," Jon McHenry says. "They have to make clear their opposition is based on policy, rather than opposition that seems to be personal resistance to the president."

In this election, he adds, it was enough "simply not to be them." Now, Republicans will have to present a clear alternative to the Democrats and a positive agenda if they hope to build on their November victory to retake the Senate and the presidency come 2012.

And if that were to happen? Then, points out Larry Sabato, the head of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, "it may be the Democrats instead who are pining for gridlock."

Jane Sasseen is the editor-in-chief of politics and opinion at Yahoo! News.

METHODOLOGY — This ABC News/Yahoo News! poll was conducted Nov. 10-16, 2010, among a random national sample of 1,048 adults. Respondents were selected using an address-based sample design. Households for which a phone number could be ascertained were contacted by phone; others were contacted by mail and asked to complete the survey via a toll-free inbound phone number or the internet. See details here. Results for the full sample have a 4-point error margin. Click here for a detailed description of sampling error.

This survey was produced by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y, with sampling, data collection and tabulation by SSRS of Media, Pa.