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Polls and Democrats

The most trenchant part of Dan Popkey’s Idaho Statesman column today was the lead: “Idaho Democrats fill ballrooms every two years to shout, ‘This is our year!’ The balloon bursts on election day.”

Sure has, for election after election since the early 90s. The year will come, at some point, when Idaho Democrats quit playing Charlie Brown’s football game with Lucy: No political status remains quo forever. So, is this the year? In today’s column, Popkey maps out a case in the affirmative. Wisely, he makes no flat predictions. But he does note that Idaho Democrats are getting a little more aggressive (which, by degrees, they are). And he says, noting a new Idaho Association of Realtors poll, the issues seem to be lining up more favorably toward Democrats than toward Republicans, and this gives the Democrats a major opening.

That last is the debatable point.

Not that the Realtors’ poll seems to be off, or that its results (which suggest strong support of education, willingness to look at new tax sources, and more) should not logically line up well with the messages of Idaho Democrats. That’s all true.

The problem is that it’s not new. It’s been true for a long time, an odd little Idaho semi-secret, and for a decade and more poll results like this one haven’t helped Idaho Democrats except at the very marginal fringes. We’ve seen, over the last decade (and longer), a variety of both public and private polls assessing the attitudes of Idahoans toward public policy, and the results again and again – over the last couple of decades – have matched reasonably closely with the Realtors poll. For something public, look to the Boise State University annual polls on Idaho attitudes toward politics and policy: You’ll find the same thing, year after year.

The gap between what people in Idaho say they want when the pollster calls, and who ultimately they choose to elect, has yawned wide for a decade and more. If Idahoans matched votes to what they say they want, Idaho’s political culture would look a lot different.

But they haven’t. The reasons why are the source of much speculation. (Maybe they’ve internalized the mihilistic campaign axioms – politics is pointless and government is an ineffectual evil at best – so many politicians use to efficient effect in Idaho.) But until those reasons are more concretely addressed, opinions about issues are unlikely to matter at the polling booth, and electoral outcomes are not likely to change much other than at the edges.

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