… A few months ago, one pundit acknowledged that Americans “usually don’t throw their law maker out of office.” But, “new polls indicate that times and perceptions about throwing the bums out may be changing.” Earlier, another distinguished commentator opined, “the nation may be headed for an anti-incumbent election in 2014 … many voters already seem inclined to ‘throw the bums out’ in the midterm … a rebellion against the status quo in which voters send outsiders to clean up the mess.”
The evidence behind these predictions: nearly three-quarters of voters “said they would like to see most members of Congress defeated … an even more eye popping number, 38%, said they didn’t want their own Representative reelected.” ….
We’ve learned that when we ask voters for whom they will vote, their answers correlate strongly with election outcomes. We’ve learned that presidential approval is related to a variety of political outcomes. But that does not mean that all poll questions actually measure what they purport to measure. CONT.
Mark Mellman (Mellman Group), The Hill