As President Obama prepares to deliver his first State of the Union address this evening, his team might want to consult our latest NBC/WSJ poll* since it paints a pretty clear picture of what the public thinks he should be spending his time on.

A majority of Americans tell us he is giving too little attention to the economy, while a plurality say he is spending too much time on the issue of health care. Almost half say he is spending the right amount of time on Afghanistan while the public is divided on the issue of climate change.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realize that fixing the economy is not only the most important thing our country needs to do, but also what Americans want most right now. It also has the merit of being something voters of all political stripes can agree on:

• Although a majority of Democrats (61%) say the President is spending the right amount of time on the economy, the rest break more than ten-to-one that he is spending too little time on it (34% too little time, 3% too much time). Not surprisingly, Independents (57% too little, 6% too much) and Republicans (68% too little, 8% too much) express even stronger feelings on the issue.

Unlike the issue of health care, which consumed most of the 2009 calendar and not only produces a vast partisan gulf, but even fissures inside the Democratic Party:

• A majority of Liberal Democrats (60%) and Blue Dog Democrats** (53%) say the President is giving the right amount of attention to health care but agreement ends there. By 30% to 15% Blue Dog Democrats say he is spending too much time on health care while by 21% to 18% Liberal Democrats say he is giving too little attention to the issue.

This data suggests Americans have a message for the president as they assess the state of the union: It is time for less emphasis on health care reform and instead it is time for a laser-like focus on the issue of the economy and jobs.

 *NBC/WSJ national survey conducted Jan 23-25, 2010 among 800 adults

 **Blue Dog Democrats are defined in this poll as White moderate and conservative Democrats.

For the first time since June 2003, the Republican candidate has a five point lead on the generic ballot in a new survey conducted for NPR by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner and Associates.  The Republican candidate has a 44%-39% advantage.

(The analysis of the data in this article  does not necessarily reflect the opinions of NPR or GQR.)

In 2008, the Dems won the generic ballot by eight points.  To have a thirteen point shift in just over one year is a remarkable shift in the political environment.  The GOP lead is bolstered by a twelve point advantage among Independents.  The caveat for Republicans, however, is that 40% of Independents are undecided.  Thus, they are still up for grabs.

Other key points on the generic ballot:

• Whites are voting Republican 51%-32%, while minorities are breaking 20% GOP/65% Dem. 
• White men are overwhelmingly backing the GOP by a 58%-28% margin, while white women are voting 45% GOP/36% Dem (remember, if there is a decent number of minorities in your state/district, a GOP candidate must carry white women to win).
• Republicans are losing 18-44 year olds, but winning big among voters age 45+ — a key group in the non-Presidential year, lower turnout elections.

Most significantly, the generic ballot improves to blowout levels among the voters most interested in the elections.   Among the 70% of likely voters who rate their interest in the upcoming November elections as an 8-10 on a scale of 1-10 (where one means not interested/ten means very interested), the GOP lead on the generic ballot grows to 48%-38%.  Among 10s, it is a 50%-36% margin.

 Obviously, the generic ballot can shift in either direction between now and November.  However, these data reinforces that the momentum is on the side of the GOP.  For skilled candidates and campaigns, momentum means, as we saw in Massachusetts, grassroots support, netroots support, money, and even message.

On Sunday, January 24th, the lead op-ed in the Sunday Outlook section of the Washington Post was written by Glen Bolger and Neil Newhouse.

Here are some of the highlights from the article:

We had the privilege of serving as pollsters in two of these three victorious Republican campaigns, in Virginia and in Massachusetts, and we found that the two races had many elements in common. Together, they offer a blueprint for how the GOP can keep the momentum going into the midterms this fall and beyond.

The quality of the candidates matters most.

In two of the recent elections, the candidates themselves were the key factors. Bob McDonnell’s campaign in Virginia introduced him as a family man focused on policy issues such as jobs and transportation; in Massachusetts, Scott Brown was an articulate candidate with an ability to stay on message — on national security, health care and the need to change Washington — even when he was being pummeled with negative ads. Both candidates were able to communicate that they were regular people with a vision for how to make things better.

Obama no longer walks on water, but don’t be disrespectful.

The president’s health-care plan was a net negative — not just in Virginia, but also in Massachusetts, where a week before the election we found that 56 percent of voters preferred to start over with a new approach to health-care reform rather than pass the current proposal. Massachusetts voters still like Obama personally — Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio’s election-night survey found he had a 59 percent favorable rating — but his presence, once deemed godlike, now does nothing for Democratic candidates.

The lesson for GOP midterm hopefuls: Welcome the president to your state. Stage counter-rallies and highlight doubts about his policies, but do not attack him personally. Show respect for the man and the office, but shine a bright light on your substantive differences. (A corollary to that is that George W. Bush is now firmly in the electorate’s rearview mirror. If Democrats couldn’t make him resonate in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Northern Virginia, it’s not going to work elsewhere, except maybe Manhattan and Los Angeles.)

 

The Republican base is fired up.

After more than three years in the wilderness, GOP voters are chomping at the bit. Virginia Republicans were consistently more interested in the election — by 20 points — than Democrats throughout our daily October tracking polls. In Massachusetts, even after Obama came to the state, Republicans were seven points more interested. Nationally, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that voters who rate their interest in this fall’s elections as a nine or a 10 on a one-to-10 scale prefer GOP control of Congress by 15 points.

So, who’s going to show up in November — a group brimming with enthusiasm, or the Obamabots who surged to the polls in 2008, but who hadn’t voted previously in big numbers and show little interest now? Republican candidates must harness that energy to build a grass-roots — and netroots — army.

Ultimately, it’s all about the independents.

It’s great to have the base excited, but Republican candidates were shellacked in 2006 and 2008 among independent voters (losing 57 to 39 percent in the midterm vote and 51 to 43 percent two years later). By contrast, McDonnell won 66 percent of independents in the Virginia governor’s race, while Brown was leading 65 percent to 26 percent among Massachusetts independents in our final tracking.

McDonnell’s campaign targeted independents, particularly in Northern Virginia, who responded to messages about jobs and fiscal responsibility. Brown, meanwhile, ran as an independent-minded candidate and a “Scott Brown Republican,” as he called himself. Among independent women (a problematic group for Republicans in recent elections), Brown managed to turn a nine-point deficit into a 31-point lead in just 10 days. In his victory speech, Brown called his election a great triumph for Massachusetts’s independent majority.

Republican candidates who win independents will take the oath of office — period.

 

Deflect negative attacks and get back to your message.

Deeds and Jon Corzine of New Jersey started their negative assaults early; Coakley went negative late. None found the Goldilocks timing. But huge credit is due to the Republican campaigns in all three states: They responded to the attacks but stayed on message.

For the midterms, rest assured that negative attacks are coming; they’re all the Democrats have this year. They don’t want to run on their record of lost jobs, special payoffs for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), and government control of car companies and health care. Remember, trends are trends until they change, and the trends of the past few years have been wiped away. For Republicans, it’s simple now: Stand strong, tell the truth, and remind voters why they should vote for you.

Glen Bolger and Neil Newhouse are partners at Public Opinion Strategies. Bolger served as the pollster for Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s campaign, and Newhouse served as the pollster for Sen.-elect Scott Brown’s campaign in Massachusetts.

Note: Neil Newhouse is proud to have served as the pollster for the Brown for Senate campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in this race.

The Scott Brown victory was indeed the perfect storm – a terrific and engaging candidate, a tremendous campaign team, an issue environment that was strongly tilted away from the national Democrats, an abbreviated campaign timetable, and a somewhat disengaged opponent.

In addition to the #1 factor, which is Scott himself and his ability to connect with voters, following is the full list of twelve keys to Scott Brown’s victory:

1. Scott Brown.
This was his victory.  Simply put, a terrific candidate.  Never underestimate the impact of an articulate candidate with a compelling message.

2. The truck.
Scott’s pick-up truck and the ad showing him driving it around the state helped give depth to the image of him as a “regular guy” as well as reinforced the fact that he was actually out there campaigning, asking people for their support.

3. Coakley’s ill-timed vacation.
Nailing into voters’ minds the thought that Coakley believed she had the race wrapped up, she went on vacation in December.  Voters noticed and later told us they believed she intended “to back into the seat.”

4. Not “Kennedy’s seat.”
This “Nashua moment,” courtesy of David Gergen at the January 11 debate, became a rallying cry for Scott and his supporters and helped frame the election as between the political insiders and the people, which was only exacerbated over the final days as Martha Coakley brought in name Democrats to provide her a lifeline.

5. Coakley’s negative advertising/Scott Brown’s response.
Anticipating a negative onslaught from the Coakley campaign, Scott’s internal ad team (hats off to Eric Fehrnstrom) cut a perfect Brown response ad aimed at Coakley for turning to a negative campaign.  So, whose image changed after the negative ad and rebuttal went on the air?  Coakley’s.  It took just three days for her image to fall from +24 to “one-to-one.”

6. Brown’s Intensity Advantage.
Over the last ten days of this race Massachusetts voters fell hard for Scott Brown.  His “very favorable” image increased ten points over the last week or so of the campaign, while Coakley’s image intensity was flat-lining.

7. Independent women.
These voters were a tough sell for Scott Brown, supporting Coakley by ten points just ten days ago.  But all that changed after the January 11th debate and subsequent negative Coakley advertising onslaught, as these voters went into the final days giving Scott a two-to-one advantage.

8. DC Fundraiser?
Seriously, Martha Coakley’s image was already imploding after the January 11th debate and the launch of the negative advertising, and yet the decision is made to send her to DC on January 13th for a PAC  fundraiser?  With health care lobbyists?  Where she watches as an aide pushes down a reporter trying to ask a question?

9. “Bloody sock.”
Curt Schilling a Yankee fan?  Good joke. This, coupled with her tone-deaf shot at Scott for his grassroots campaigning at the New Year’s Day Bruins game at Fenway Park reinforced her elitist image.

10. Ayla and Arianna.
The two Brown daughters were stars in the campaign in helping get Scott’s message across and in deflating the over the top negative attacks against Scott.  Ayla’s recorded phone calls were mentioned by voters as helping convince them to support Scott.

11. Fund-raising.
This is one for the record books.  The daily totals were staggering.  And, the campaign clearly understood the nexus between Scott’s visibility on conservative-tilted national news programs and the ability to raise money on-line.

With Republicans completely out of power, Scott’s on-line success suggests that the huge Democratic advantage on-line can be overcome by an energized national conservative base.

12. The Brown Team
There was an amazing combination of political expertise brought together for this abbreviated race.  For a state so bereft of GOP officeholders, it’s a gold mine of political talent.  It was a seamless and self-less effort made possible by the NRSC and Mitt Romney’s on-the-ground team that made the difference here.

TO:                  NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC LEADERS

FROM:            NEIL NEWHOUSE – PUBLIC OPINION STRATEGIES

SUBJECT:      WHAT MASSACHUSETTS MEANS FOR YOU

DATE:            JANUARY 19, 2010

(Note: Neil Newhouse is proud to have served as the pollster for the Brown for Senate campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.)

On the heels of Scott Brown’s stunning landslide victory in Massachusetts, here are some observations based on our polling that might interest you.

• Stop blaming Martha Coakley.

It’s not all her fault.  It’s the policies she supported that were more to blame.  She won the Democratic primary trouncing her opponents and was clearly the best candidate the party had to offer in the state.  She’d won statewide in convincing fashion.  She was a proven quantity.  And, yet this race wasn’t even close.

After watching Creigh Deeds, Jon Corzine and now Martha Coakley go down in flames, do you really think that the one thing they had in common was that they were below average candidates running sub-par campaigns?

• Good idea going negative, worked out pretty well, huh?

One of the lessons Democrats are taking away from this race is that they need to go negative against Republican challengers earlier in the campaign.  Be advised that this race turned, and turned fast, following the debate on January 11^th when the Coakley campaign launched their negative advertising.  Within days her image was almost inverted and her “information flow” was a net negative.  Being perceived as the negative campaigner moved key groups against Martha that she could never win back.

• Like Virginia and New Jersey, President Obama’s visit changed very few votes.

Who could have imagined that one year after winning Massachusetts with 63% of the vote, bringing the President into the state to campaign for Martha Coakley changed very few votes.  While it DID energize segments of the Democratic base, Obama’s visit also helped us reinforce our support among Independent voters and ratchet up their intensity about the election.  Coakley swayed very few voters to her side.

Bottom Line

Given the Republican Party’s problems from 2005-2008, I personally want to thank you for getting the GOP back into the game by overreaching and overspending.

After spending four years watching Republican campaigns face the same problems — blaming candidates instead of the challenging political environment and going negative early to define the Democratic candidate — I understand those reflexive responses.

Given the opportunities the GOP has in November, please continue to blame your candidates and press forward with a reckless policy agenda.

In sum, my advice comes down to: no need to change a thing — full speed ahead.