Hotline released a very interesting poll this week (PDF), which we briefly covered on MyDD. One of the most interesting aspects of the poll is that it included both a generic presidential ballot, and an open-ended question on which candidate voters support for President in 2008. The poll has spurred a lot of discussion at places like Pollster.com and, predictably, Hotline on Call. Over at Hotline, the discussion has mainly focused on why the Democratic Party does so much better on a generic ballot against the Republican Party than specific Democratic candidates like Clinton, Obama and Edwards perform on named, hypothetical trial heat polls against specific Republican candidates like Giuliani and McCain (see here and here for these discussions). However, I think there is something far more interesting in the Hotline poll that has been less discussed, and which is very relevant to Matt's discussion below about why Republicans and conservative are not doing well online in comparison to Democrats and progressives. Specifically, right now voters have to be prompted before they support Republicans, while voters are ready to support Democrats whether or not they are even being asked.

More in the extended entry.

To demonstrate this point, go over to Republican operated Real Clear Politics and check out the six Clinton-Edwards-Giuliani-McCain-Obama general election matchups between the five top tier, high name recognition, Democratic and Republican candidates. In these six matchups, the mean score for the Democratic candidate is 43%, while the mean score for the Republican candidate is 46%, giving the Republicans, on average, a narrow advantage. Now, turn to the open-ended presidential support question on page 10 of the Diageo / Hotline poll. In this question, when all names and other specific prompts are removed from the question, Democrats hold a combined lead of 40%-22%, and each of the top three Democrats defeats both McCain and Giuliani. The key here is that people must be prompted to support specific Republicans, while they do not have to be prompted to support specific Democrats. For their part, Democrats only experience a small, 3% drop-off in support from 43% to 40% when names are removed from the question. By way of contrast, Republicans see more than half of their supporters melt away once prompts are removed, dropping from 46% to 22%.

This gaping difference means three things. First, the Republican coalition is teetering on the brink of total collapse, as less than half of its members are sold on the individuals with the potential to become coalition leaders. Second, Democrats have not yet made the sale to swing disaffected members of the Republican coalition to our side, as otherwise we would maintain our large leads even when names and prompts are included in the question. There is a huge block of disaffected Republican votes out there, making pro-Democratic realignment, which happens to be one of my three end-game goals as a progressive activist, a serious possibility but not yet a realization (progressive infrastructure realignment and progressive ideological realignment are the other two goals). Third, and this relates to Matt's discussion, it means that at the current point in time, progressive and Democratic voters / activists are politically engaged, committed, and self-starting to a degree far surpassing conservative and Republican voters / activists. Generally speaking, the Internet, and online political activism, does not come to you--you must seek it out yourself without anyone telling you to do so. Right now, there is a huge difference in prompted vs. non-prompted support between the two coalitions, and Democrats hold a dominating edge among support that comes without prompting. As much as any other reason, that is why Democrats are currently dominating the world of online politics. Republicans have to be prompted to support their own, and that does not translate into much activism in the world of online politics.

I have to wonder how much of this difference in self-starting support and activism is connected to, ironically enough, how, as former Bush chief strategist Matthew Dowd has complained, after the attacks on 9/11 Bush never called on the American people to do anything more than go shopping. There were droves of conservatives waiting for a moment like 9-11 and a resulting "war on something big and evil" to give meaning to their lives commensurate with generations who lived during WWII or the cold war. Last year, Christopher Hayes wrote a great piece on how the connection between the extreme WWII worship of the 1990's was connected to the culture of many staunch supporters of "war on terror" over the past five plus years. Bush could have at least tapped into that sentiment, which probably would have led to a huge boom in online activism for conservatives and Republicans, but he never did. Why not? The fact is that the Republican coalition is currently led by elitists who have no faith in the general American population, who are in fact scared of the general American population, and who set up a large, power-grabbing infrastructure designed to maintain a minority-supported government indefinitely. From telling people to just go shopping after 9/11, to hundreds of signing statements, the Patriot Act, listening to every phone call made by American citizens, revoking constitutional rights, an endlessly powerful executive branch, record-breaking fundraising from wealthy donors, the K-Street project, gerrymandered maps, voter suppression, stolen elections, the Republican Noise Machine, the pundit payola scandal, Orwellian language, firing US Attorneys who don't abide by a partisan agenda, outing the undercover CIA spouses of political opponents, using government spending as a political tool rather than sound public policy, playing on people's fears and fabricating WMD evidence to start a war, and never listening to the will of the people even after massive electoral defeats, the Bush administration has done everything in its power to tune out, discourage and otherwise mute the effectiveness of the self-starting capabilities of the American people. Not only has this put half of the Republican coalition in danger of bolting altogether, but it has also probably made it clear to even many loyal Bush supporters that, in order to truly demonstrate their loyalty, the best thing they can do is shut up and not take activism to support their leaders. After the past seven years, how could even loyal Republicans have the impression that their leaders want independent action taken on their behalf? The Republican and conservative rank and files might do want they are told, when prompted, but otherwise don't expect much action from them these days. There is hardly a single entrepreneurial idea left in their still consistently thinning ranks.