Monday, March 2, 2009

Voters get the message

This sort of thing (via Atrios) makes me feel good about democracy.
HARRISBURG -- A new statewide poll shows 53 percent of Pennsylvanians -- and 66 percent of Republicans -- want someone to replace Sen. Arlen Specter.
It's not that an unpopular Republican makes me feel good. It's that the behavior of politicians in DC ultimately gets communicated to the voters back home. That a Republican politician would be relatively unpopular in a state that went for Obama by double digits last year is not particularly striking. But Republican voters have noticed that he's a bad Republican, and they're much more sour on him than Pennsylvania Democrats are.

I saw a similar poll a few years back on Joe Lieberman, who was reasonably popular in Connecticut except among Democrats, who noticed that he wasn't being a very good Democrat. Voters do figure stuff out.

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