Middle class giving Dems hope of victory

WASHINGTON (AP) — Middle-class voters who deserted the Democratic Party a dozen years ago are now giving the party its best chance to reclaim the House since the GOP swept Democrats from power in 1994.

Motivated by anger at President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, 56 percent of likely voters said they will vote on Nov. 7 to send a Democrat to the House and 37 percent said they will vote Republican. Voters in the latest Associated Press-AOL News poll rated Iraq and the economy as their top issues.

"I don't care if I vote for Happy the Clown, just so it's not who's there now," said Mary Nyilas, 51, an independent voter from Cologne, N.J., who said she will do everything she can to "vote against the powers that put us in this situation" in Iraq.

Less than two weeks before voters elect a new Congress, the poll indicated that Republicans are in jeopardy of losing their grip on the House after a dozen years in power. The survey had voters leaning considerably more toward Democrats in the final weeks of the campaign.

In early October, Democrats had a 10 percentage-point advantage when voters were asked whether they would vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate in their congressional district. The Democratic edge is now 19 percentage points.

The AP-AOL News telephone poll of 2,000 adults, 970 of whom are likely voters, was conducted by Ipsos Oct. 20-25. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points for all adults and 3 percentage points for likely voters.

Dismissing talk of a sour outlook for the GOP, House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Thursday cited signs of a strong economy and rejected the Democratic argument that voters should fire him and his rank-and-file.

"Things are looking pretty good, and I don't think anybody would really want to change that at this time," he said.

In the minority, Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate to win control of Congress. They are arguing for a change in leadership and trying to tap into intense public anxiety about the Iraq war as well as discontent with Bush and the Republicans in charge of the House and Senate.

The 2006 election has been likened to 1994, when backlash against the controlling party, then the Democrats, triggered a change in power and ushered in an era of new rulers.

Twelve years later, the tables appear poised to turn, in part because, as an AP analysis shows, middle-class voters are returning to the Democratic Party after abandoning it in 1994.

Back then, middle-class voters, those earning less than $75,000 a year and those who have graduated from high school or have some college education, fled the Democratic Party in droves, helping Republicans capture dozens of Democratic-held House seats to seize control for the first time in decades.

Democrats recovered some of that lost ground in the following years, but they never fully regained their grasp on the middle class. In the intervening midterm elections, Democrats and Republicans have split the House vote among middle-income and middle-education groups.

This fall, however, the AP-AOL News poll indicates, Democrats have an advantage, in some cases in the double digits, among middle-class voters.

"I feel like the Republicans have forgotten the middle class," said Joseph Altland, 73, a retired teacher in York, Pa., who is a registered Republican but says he is considering becoming an independent. A majority of middle-class voters now favor Democrats to control the House and say that Democrats best represent their most closely held beliefs. They trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle the situation in Iraq, which most of them view as a mistake. The war is this voting group's most important issue. The economy and health care are close behind.

Democrats say the shift isn't a surprise.

"We're the ones who understand the middle-class squeeze," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, head of the House Democrats' campaign effort. "Democrats are talking about middle-class tax cuts, and Republicans are talking about staying the course."

But Rep. Phil English, R-Pa., challenged that statement, saying: "Middle-class voters are no more likely to gravitate to the Democrats in any sustained way than chickens would embrace Colonel Sanders. The Republicans, however imperfectly, have done the better job of embracing middle-class needs."

Regardless of who is right, the overall picture looks bleak for Republicans.

Voters have grown increasingly angry at the Bush administration and GOP leadership in Congress. The percentage of those who say they are angry with the administration has grown to 40 percent from 32 percent in early October. As for Congress, 32 percent of likely voters call themselves angry, up from 28 percent.