Here comes the pain. That is the message for the GOP and the business community from StrategyOne’s recent survey of Washington opinion elites.
In StrategyOne’s mid-June Beltway Barometer survey of 400 Washington opinion elites, a majority of Democrats (86 percent) and Republicans (61 percent) believed that Democrats will increase their majorities in the 2008 congressional elections. By contrast, only 11 percent of Republican elites in Washington thought the GOP would gain seats in November.
While they are clearly despondent over the upcoming Congressional elections, elite Republicans are more optimistic about their chances in the presidential election. Over half (53 percent) of GOP elites in D.C. think McCain will win the election, while 32 percent think Obama will win. Democratic opinion elites were far more upbeat: 84 percent of them think Obama will win and a mere 9 percent think McCain will. In short, leading beltway Democrats are incredibly hopeful for change in the executive branch, while Republican elites are at best guardedly optimistic about McCain’s chances to keep the GOP in the Oval Office.
The two parties may not agree on the presidential race, but large majorities of both parties’ elites believe that the next Congress will usher in a more “restrictive regulatory environment for American business.” Over two-thirds (70 percent) of leading beltway Republicans and 62 percent of elite D.C. Democrats believe 2009 and 2010 will bring a more difficult regulatory environment for corporate America.
They may agree on a tighter regulatory regime moving forward, but when it comes to market regulation, party elites in Washington have dramatically divergent views. To measure party elites’ views on this issue, we resurrected a question first used in public opinion polling in 1946: “In all industries where there is competition, do you think companies should be allowed to make all the profit they can, or that government should put a limit on the profits companies can make?”
True to type, 75 percent of Republican elites in Washington said that corporate America should be allowed to make all the profit they can.
Elite Democratic opinion was quite different. Here only 46 percent said companies should be allowed to make all the profit they can, with 35 percent saying that government should limit corporate profits. The rest were unsure.
With Washington elites in both parties agreeing that Democrats will increase their margins in Congress and that tighter regulation of the economy is expected in 2009 and 2010, the atmosphere is clearly gloomy for Republicans in Washington.
– Robert Moran is executive vice president at public-opinion research firm StrategyOne. The Beltway Barometer is a quarterly survey of elite Washington opinion conducted among a tightly screened panel of Washington-area households.