UTICA, New York – A majority of likely voters (72%) believe that a modern American electoral tradition will hold and the President’s party will lose seats in the upcoming 2010 Congressional elections. Forty-one percent of likely voters believe the Democrats will lose seats, but not the majority in either the House of Representatives or the Senate while nearly one-third (31%) believe Congressional Democrats will lose at least one of their two majorities.
Only 5% believe Republicans will lose seats in the 2010 elections and 14% say it will be a close election and there will not be a major shift either way. Even a majority of Democrats surveyed (56%) believe their party will lose seats in the election, while a majority of Republicans (54%) believe they will gain the majority in at least one house of Congress.
Fifty-nine percent of likely voters say they would be very likely or somewhat likely to vote for a candidate from a moderate of independent party in an election. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote for a candidate from a moderate or independent party with more than half of Democrats saying they would be likely to vote for such a candidate (56%) compared to 45% of Republicans who say they would vote for a candidate from a moderate or independent party. One-in-five likely voters (20%) say they would be very likely to vote for a candidate from a moderate or independent party, including 14% of Republicans and 13% of Democrats.
This interactive survey of 2,293 likely voters was conducted November 4 -6, 2009. A sampling of Zogby International’s online panel, which is representative of likely voters in the US, was invited to participate. Slight weights were added region, party, age, race, religion, gender, education to more accurately reflect the population. The margin of error is +/- 2.1 percentage points. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.