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Politics : John Kerry for President Free speach thread NON-CENSORED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (829)	5/11/2005 1:45:07 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1449

Republicans' Rise Fueled by Lower-Income Voters, U.S. Poll Says May 11 (Bloomberg) -- The Republican rise to power in Washington has been fueled by the support of many lower-income voters who are optimistic about the future and favor an assertive foreign policy to combat global terrorism. The swing of these voters toward the Republicans is a major finding of a survey of the American electorate by the Washington- based Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The survey, released yesterday, detected a shift in the political landscape that ``decidedly favored'' the Republicans. In addition to making broad inroads among many lower-income voters, the Republicans have at least momentarily won the allegiance of a majority of those in the center of the political spectrum, said Andrew Kohut, who directed the poll. ``The values of the people in the political middle push them toward the Republican Party more than toward the Democrats,'' Kohut said yesterday. ``It will be up to the Republicans to make more of those people into real Republicans rather than independents leaning Republican, and to find a way to deal with the concerns of these groups.'' That may not be easy, according to the poll. The Republican electoral coalition is united by a belief in a tough foreign policy, yet divided over a host of other issues, including immigration, the environment and the role of government in helping the less affluent. In particular, the Republicans' success in winning lower- income voters has increased the potential for fissures within their coalition, because these new adherents are much more positive about government activism than more traditional party supporters, Kohut said. ``What this poll shows is that the bigger GOP tent now includes groups that are not adverse to government,'' he said. Majorities Republicans now have majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Senate, and a Republican, President George W. Bush, is in the White House. Pew pollsters surveyed 2,000 people in December and then re- interviewed 1,090 of them in March to form a detailed portrait of the electorate, dividing it into nine distinct groupings. It was the fourth time since 1987 that the Washington-based center has done such a survey. Three of those groupings are strongly Republican: traditional pro-business conservatives dubbed ``enterprisers'' by Pew, social conservatives who focus on moral issues -- and a group Pew called ``pro-government conservatives.'' This latter group is predominantly young, female, Southern and lower-income. It shares with the rest of the party a focus on moral issues and an assertive foreign policy, while tending to be critical of business and supportive of government regulation ``to protect the public good and the environment,'' Pew pollsters said. Many of those comprising this group are relative newcomers to the political process whose parents were Democrats, Kohut said. The ability of the Republicans to win over these new voters represented a major advance for the party, he said. Political Spectrum The center of the political spectrum, according to Pew, is occupied by two disparate elements: a group of well-educated, optimistic people who are upbeat about both their own circumstances and those of the nation, and a much less affluent group that tends to be cynical about government and pessimistic about their financial situation. Both of these centrist groups swung to Bush in last year's election, the poll found. ``Republicans have succeeded in attracting two types of swing voters who could not be more different,'' Pew pollsters said. ``The common threads are a highly favorable opinion of President Bush personally and support for an aggressive military stance against potential enemies of the U.S.'' The three Democratic groupings were united by their disapproval of Bush, their belief in a foreign policy based more on diplomacy than military force and their belief in a strong governmental safety net for the disadvantaged. Personal Values The poll found that Democrats part company over social and personal values. One component of the Democratic electoral coalition is affluent, well-educated and highly secular in its personal outlook. A second is quite religious and socially conservative; a third is defined mostly by its low-income status and its mistrust of both business and government. Kohut said that while the poll showed the Republicans had gained a clear advantage over their political adversaries, it was too early to tell whether that advantage would endure, especially once Bush begins to recede from the scene. ``Being more dominant in the center is a first for the Republicans,'' Kohut said. ``The question is whether the future leadership of the Republican Party in the rest of Bush's second term can exploit the advantages and perpetuate the advantages that we see in this polling.'' To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Washington at kfireman1@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: May 11, 2005 00:06 EDT