Pollster David Winston believes Republicans have better prospects in 2010 than they did in 1994. “This administration has opened the door wide for Republicans,” he says. “It’s even more open than it was in 1994.”

But Winston says Republicans “have the challenge of what people remember from 2006,” when Republicans were voted out of office in Congress. And they must answer what Winston calls the “why us?” question. They need to tell voters “what you’re going to get if we have a Republican majority.”

To read more, turn to weeklystandard.com

“Ultimately, it will be a race about content,” says Mr. Winston. “Especially now, given concern on the Republican side about where this country is headed, voters want to hear how are you going to govern and where would you take this country.

To read the full breakdown of possible candidates, click to alaskadispatch.com

“Basically, the public does not think now is the time to increase taxes, by any stretch,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s going to come back to the Democrats to prove that they’re not increasing taxes on small businesses, which, given the number of small businesses that [fall into high income-tax brackets], they’re not going to be able to do.”

To read more, click to thewashingtontimes.com

Congressional Democrats and the White House “are trying to deal with these other issues when there is only one issue in the room: jobs and the economy,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster.

To read more, click to washingtonpost.com

“Part of the dynamic here is the way President Obama and congressional Democrats govern ha[s] opened this door wide open for Republicans, but the public at this point isn’t just simply saying, ‘Look at how bad [Democrats] are.’ They want to know what you’re going to do — why should they vote for you?”

To read more, turn to thehill.com

“What’s our plan to create jobs and grow the economy?” said GOP pollster David Winston, who is advising the House Republican leadership on the effort. “That’s really what we have to address. We need command focus.”

To read more, turn to washingtonpost.com

” ‘What is this going to do to grow the economy and create jobs?’ ” Winston said voters would ask. “If everybody’s going to point fingers at each other, that’s not what people want to hear.”

To read the full article, click to washingtonpost.com

Winston argues that the GOP should articulate a specific plan, but he also cautions against putting too much into it.

“One of the reason the door has opened for Republicans is that President Obama has focused on so many other things,” he added. “If you create an 87-point agenda, you’re making the same mistake.”

To read more, click to latimes.com

Polls taken during the healthcare debate last year found that senior citizens over 65 were more strongly opposed to the plan than any other age group — but over time, they were joined by middle-aged baby boomers, who became increasingly negative.

“Older voters are worried that the quality of their healthcare could decline,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster. “That opens a door where they’re willing to listen to Republicans. It’s a huge opportunity.”

To read more: click to latimes.com

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner shares his economic outlook and discusses trade with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow. David Winston, of The Winston Group, and Josh Gottheimer, of Burson-Marsteller, share their reactions to Geithner’s comments.

“It dwarfs everything,” said Republican pollster David Winston. “It’s sort of like looking at a house and there’s all these things that need repair, but if the roof’s on fire, all these things are secondary. Jobs and the economy are the equivalent of the fire on the roof.”

To read the entire article, click on www.tampabay.com

“People have lost confidence in what the Democrats are doing,” said Republican strategist David Winston. “But that is not enough of a reason to vote for Republicans. Republicans still have to answer the question, ‘Why us?’ “

To read the entire article, turn to http://online.wsj.com

Of course, Obama isn’t on the ballot this November. But his ratings contribute to what Winston calls the public’s “overall sense of the ability to govern.” From that perspective, Obama’s troubles are the Democrats’ troubles.

To read more about the poll numbers and Republican response to them, read the full article at washingtonexaminer.com

Boehner released new data produced by Republican pollster David Winston. The survey of 1,000 registered voters just before the Memorial Day recess showed that 62 percent believed that by not passing a budget, Congress missed an opportunity to “rein in spending.”

Access the full article (with an account) on rollcall.com

Republicans are hanging their words partially on a Winston Group poll, which showed that 62 percent of those surveyed believe that Congress’s failure to pass a budget means that it is “missing an opportunity to rein in government spending and provide fiscal discipline that economists say is needed to create jobs and grow the economy.”

To read the full article, turn to
politico.com

“For the election, part of what you want to do is contrast what would happen if you were governing,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster who advises party leaders in Congress. “The Democrats and President Obama spent months talking about health care, and Republicans say they should have spent that time working on jobs.”

Access the full article at washingtonpost.com

David Winston, a GOP pollster who worked on the 1994 Contract with America Republican majorities, says the 2010 elections offer a “real opportunity,” but so does 2012. The reason: The Bush tax cuts expire starting later this year, and the economy could get socked. “I don’t view this year as a one-shot deal.”

To check out the fill Washington Whispers post, go to usnews.com

“Branstad is proving that his credentials and an economic focus as a conservative puts together a large majority coalition,” said David Winston, a national Republican pollster. “It’s a good position for him to be in, and positions him well for the general election.”

To read the full article, click on desmoinesregister.com

“This isn’t a college debate about who made the best points,” said Republican strategist David Winston, who has seen tea party candidates rising as they focus their arguments on deficit spending and federal overreach. “If they’re going to win races, they have to prove they can build a coalition.”

To read the full article, turn to latimes.com

But GOP strategists are careful to note that while Palin, a controversial figure in her own party, has inspired some, the new class of conservative female candidates has largely been motivated by the economy and fervent opposition to the Obama administration’s agenda.
“I certainly don’t think that Sarah Palin has had nothing to do with this,” Soltis says, “but it is the huge concerns about the economy and unemployment that are energizing people across the board — including Republican women.”

To read the entire article, click on npr.org

Politics: “Tea Party” is a bit of a loaded term on all sides of the debate. Does that make it hard to get an accurate reading?
Soltis: It depends on the question that you ask. Some pollsters ask “Do you support the Tea Party?” I believe there was a question some months ago, “Do you sympathize with the Tea Party?” We tried to ask a question that was pretty strong, so it was either yes or no, not how you feel about it. We wanted to get the most definite group.

To read the entire interview, go to politicsmagazine.com

“It’s a remarkable situation, given where things were a year ago, where Republicans clearly have an opportunity to do really well,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster who concentrates on Congressional races. “The door is open in terms of potential. But we have to answer the question, Why us?”

To read the full article, go to nytimes.com

In 1992, 53 percent of those who backed Perot for president described themselves as moderate, with 27 percent calling themselves conservative and 20 percent liberal, according to the exit polls. Among tea party activists, the Post poll and the CBS-New York Times poll both found that nearly three-quarters called themselves conservative. David Winston, a Republican pollster, pegged the group’s makeup as 65 percent conservative, 26 percent moderate.

Dont be too quick to mistake tea party for Perot movement [The Washington Post].

To be sure, great efforts have been made recently to demonize the Tea Party movement. But polling suggests that the Tea Party movement has not been diminished but, in fact, has grown stronger. The Winston Group found, in three national surveys conducted from December through February and published April 1, that the Tea Party movement is composed of a broad cross-section of the American people — 40 to 50 percent of its supporters are non-Republicans. Indeed, one-third of self-identified Democrats say they support the Tea Party movement.

Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell – How the Democrats can avoid a November bloodbath [The Washington Post]

“There’s a certain level of infrastructure that’s certainly important,” says David Winston, a Republican pollster. “But ultimately, it’s the broader message and the American people’s sense of who they want to have govern the country that matters.”

To read the full story, turn to CSMonitor.com

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There are two ways that one can read the Winston Group poll on the political orientation of those who consider themselves a part of the tea-party movement. One way — the headline that The Hill very reasonably chose — is that about 40 percent of tea-partiers are independents or Democrats. The other — obviously every bit as mathematically valid — is that 60 percent are Republicans. Either way, the results are more interesting thansurprising, as they are broadly in line with previous polling on the subject — as well as what I think we can reasonably infer about the movement.

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: A Teacup Half-Full.

“It’s a good sample size,” David Winston, polling director of the Winston Group that did the poll for an education advocacy group, told the Ballot Box blog of The Hill newspaper.

The Tea Party adherents broke down 28% independent, 17% Democrat and only 57% Republican. Not coincidentally, this bipartisan breakdown has been the way that Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin has often described movement members as “commonsense Americans” worried and….

…angered by the over-reaching one-party control of Democrats in Washington these last 15 months, rooted initially in opposition to Obama’s $787 billion government economic stimulus package.

Read the full story at latimesblogs.com

“I’m sure he would like us to spend all our time on health care, but we’re not going to do that,” said Winston, a longtime adviser to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
“The No. 1 issue in the country is jobs and the economy, and I’m sure he’d love Republicans to take their eye off that,” Winston said.

Read the full story at desmoinesregister.com

However, David Winston, a GOP pollster in Washington, contends that for Democrats in moderate, swing districts such as Kilroy, Driehaus and Boccieri, the health-care bill does mean trouble, in part because of the overall political climate.

“You voted for a package people didn’t want and, two, you didn’t focus on the issue they really care about, which is jobs,” he said.

To read more, click to dispatchpolitics.com

“Their choice was to pass bad legislation or prove they’re incapable of governing,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster who works closely with the party’s House and Senate leadership. Moreover, he said, the effort was off point; by far the greatest concern of most voters is the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate.

To read more, go to latimes.com

“Obama’s not on the ballot, but Pelosi’s role as Speaker is,” said GOP pollster David Winston. “She’s up.”

Read more: politico.com

“The way some of the polls have worked is that they cherry-pick the positive items and leave the negative items out, which creates what I would call a false positive,” says David Winston a Republican pollster.

Read more on washingtonexaminer.com

“One of the problems that Democrats have had is they understood late that they’ve been on the wrong issue. This has been about jobs and unemployment. When you have three months of unemployment 10 percent or higher, the public is unhappy.”

To read the complete article, turn to theKansas City Starwebsite.

But David Winston, a political consultant who advises Congressional Republican leaders, said the unemployment rate was the most important indicator for voters assessing Mr. Obama’s performance.

“If this number doesn’t significantly improve, that’s going to be a negative for him and for his party,” Mr. Winston said.

Access the full article here: nytimes.com

If Obama’s numbers continue to slide, his policy agenda is at serious risk. Don’t think for one moment that members of the House and Senate don’t pay attention to these national polls. They do, especially those who find themselves in competitive races. Equally important, their own internal state or district polls will likely also have a presidential job approval question. Whether Obama is under 50% or under water back home could and, in many cases, will impact their voting behavior in D.C.

To read all of David’s article, turn to pollster.com

“The majority of people view it as an economic issue,” said David Winston, who has polled for the House and Senate Republican leadership on the issue.

To access the entire article, turn to LATimes.com

“I think the conservative brand is generally fine,” said Republican pollster David Winston. “But the Republican brand has difficulty at this point. And there’s no question that, until the party stops being the opposition party and starts being the alternative party, it’s not going to help its brand.”

To read more, turn to DesMoinesRegister.com

David Winston, a pollster who advises the Republican leaders in Congress, said that when populism is married to a positive agenda that gives voters a concrete alternative to the status quo, it can alter the landscape, as it did when Republicans captured the House in 1994.

“The challenge is not tapping into a populist environment, it’s creating an alternative that brings about the next political shift,” he said.

To read more of Stevenson’s article, turn to nytimes.com

Last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee called a meeting with activists on the right, including religious conservatives, to discuss the lessons of New York 23. “Any time you have a loss like we did in 2008, there’s a debate about how the party should go forward,” says David Winston, the pollster for congressional Republicans. “But New York 23 showed that that debate could be poisonous.”

“Faith-Based Challenges Show a New Rift in the GOP”: US News and World Report

One attendee told POLITICO that the pundits’ attitude was very much “they’re willing to work together when that works and they’re willing to club each other when clubbing is appropriate.”

To read more of the Politico story, access it here.

“Any time you have unemployment this high, it is the number one story, whether it’s being written about or not,” says David Winston, a Republican pollster who for months has urged GOP officeholders to focus steadily on the issue.

To read more of the article, click on washingtonexaminer.com

“This is not a simplistic problem,” said Republican pollster David Winston. “You watched Democrats go through this after the 1994 election. It’s the constant tension within any political party.”

To read the full article, click to the Washington Post’s website.

For a recent report to House Republican leader Rep. John Boehner, Winston asked people to judge two different approaches to today’s woes. The choice was between “Republicans who say Congress should be focusing on long-term policies that create jobs, like small business and family tax relief, and controlling federal spending to get our economy moving again,” and “Democrats who say that health insurance reform is key to jump-starting the economy by expanding coverage to the uninsured, lowering costs, and restricting the worst insurance company practices, and we must get it done this year.”
Fifty-four percent of respondents agreed with the Republican approach, versus 40 percent who agreed with the Democratic approach. That’s not because they like Republicans better than Democrats — they don’t — but because they want their leaders to directly address the economy and jobs.

To read more, turn to washingtonexaminer.com for the full article.

“Yet as jobs reports continue to be grim and as Americans question whether the stimulus has worked, the president and congressional Democrats remain focused on health insurance reform rather than the economy,” Winston wrote.

[The Hill]

“Big themes will emerge for this off-year election just as they did for 1994-1998-2002-2006 races,” said Republican pollster David Winston, who advises the congressional Republican leadership. “That’s why to assume that the 2010 elections will automatically follow a historical pattern — when there have been so many major changes in political communication in recent years — is to miss the big picture.” Presidential politics permanently changed with the 1960 election and the over-arching importance of television. The same kind of transformation may have begun occurring in the mid-1990s with the proliferation of cable television channels and the emergence of the Internet.

The Economy and the 2010 Elections: Bleak Assumptions May Be Premature [Politics Daily]

Anti-Obama passions are undeniably present, although they may not be as meaningful as advertised. In part, they reflect the high-decibel partisanship of a political dialogue defined by cable television and angry Web sites. As Republican pollster David Winston puts it, “I think there are things going on that have nothing to do with Obama, like the change in the political discourse.”

Access the entire article on Politics Daily

Hollywood, Calif. – Sept. 8, 2009 – Viacom (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with initiative partners AT&T, Capital One Financial Corporation and NYSE Euronext, today launched Get Schooled with a national broadcast and an education conference at the Paramount Pictures lot. The five-year initiative aims to generate greater awareness and engagement in addressing the nation’s education crisis and to offer practical resources and support to students.

“We couldn’t be having this conversation at a better time,” said Bill Gates, Co-chair of the Gates Foundation. “The education crisis is damaging our ability to compete in the global economy, and we need to do more to engage all Americans – from policymakers and corporate leaders to families and young people – in our efforts to support students in completing their education and achieving their dreams.”

The Get Schooled initiative also announced today the results of a poll conducted by The Winston Group showing that an overwhelming percentage of Americans believe that the United States is lagging behind other nations when it comes to the quality of education. Eighty-one percent of survey respondents said that they do not believe that the United States has the best public education system in the world. Eighty-nine percent believe that if American students are not receiving as good of an education as their overseas counterparts, it will have a negative effect on the American economy.

“We are committed to raising awareness and, even more importantly, to converting that awareness into action,” said Philippe Dauman, President and CEO of Viacom. “Improving the workforce readiness of America’s upcoming generations is a business imperative. By 2020, our nation may be short 14 million college-educated workers, and the trends are moving against us. The cost to the U.S. economy of students unprepared to enter college and the workforce is estimated at close to $4 billion dollars annually in lost wages and remedial education costs. But the long-term cost is exponentially greater.”

From 2006 to 2016 there will be more than two million new jobs created requiring at least an associate degree or postsecondary training, according to the New Democratic Leadership Council. However, the reality is that two-thirds of American ninth graders will not be prepared for college within four years, and half of those who actually go to college will never earn a degree.

“Investing in a well-educated workforce may be the single most important thing we can do to help the U.S. remain a leader in the global economy,” said Charlene Lake, Senior Vice President for Public Affairs and Chief Sustainability Officer for AT&T. “If we come together as business leaders, policymakers, parents and as a community, we can ensure that today’s students have the skills and knowledge for meaningful careers, and that American businesses have a deep and diverse talent pool from which to hire. AT&T is proud to be a partner in Get Schooled.”

As part of Get Schooled’s mission to foster a national dialogue on education issues, AT&T is organizing “screening parties” and discussions around the premiere of the TV broadcast of Get Schooled: You Have the Right. Local events, organized with community partners, will take place in 14 cities across the nation.

“NYSE Euronext is proud to partner with all the sponsors of the Get Schooled initiative. Improving America’s education system is critically important to the future of our children and our prosperity,” said Duncan L. Niederauer, CEO of NYSE Euronext. “To continue developing future generations of innovators and investors, we must ensure that our young people are equipped with the necessary skills to compete in the global marketplace and succeed in life. At NYSE Euronext, we have a long-standing commitment to financial literacy, and we are pleased to offer our expertise and brand behind this great initiative.”

“At Capital One we recognize that one of the most important investments we can make in the future is an investment in education,” said Carolyn Berkowitz, President of Capital One Foundation and Vice President for Community Affairs at Capital One. “We are proud to support programs like Get Schooled to help reinforce the importance of financial literacy. Our goal is to help give students a solid foundation of money management knowledge and skills so that they can make wise financial choices in the future.”

The launch of Get Schooled, at the Paramount Pictures lot, includes a conference featuring a line-up of distinguished speakers: Bill Gates, Philippe Dauman, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Tony Miller, filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, author and political columnist Arianna Huffington, New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein and Los Angeles-area High School Athletic Director Stephen Minix. The education conference will be attended by an audience of almost one thousand – including corporate and nonprofit partners, students, thought leaders, celebrities and other education stakeholders. Its goal is to highlight fresh perspectives on ways to dramatically increase high school graduation rates and college completion rates. The speakers will draw from their personal and professional experiences, sharing insights on how to ensure that all students receive a top-notch education and are ready to compete in a global marketplace.

The launch events on the Paramount Pictures lot also include the premiere of the Get Schooled: You Have the Right documentary featuring President Barack Obama, Kelly Clarkson and LeBron James, and three professionals who work alongside them, which will air across all of Viacom’s U.S. networks, including BET, MTV, VH1, CMT, Comedy Central, Spike TV, TV Land and Nickelodeon, at 8 p.m. Eastern/Pacific and 7 p.m. Central.

ABOUT THE WINSTON GROUP POLL
The Winston Group survey of 1,000 voters nationwide probed Americans’ views about education. The telephone survey was conducted Aug. 23-27, 2009 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1%.

ABOUT GET SCHOOLED
Get Schooled is a national program that connects, inspires and mobilizes people – from policymakers and corporate leaders to communities and kids – to find effective solutions to the problems facing our education system. It provides resources and information, community outreach and creative programming that engage a range of audiences to address America’s education crisis. Get Schooled’s co-developers are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Viacom, including BET Networks, MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures. The initiative combines the Foundation’s deep knowledge of education reform with the power of Viacom’s diverse brands to raise awareness about the challenges facing America’s public education system and provide information and solutions for students and their families.

To find out more about Get Schooled and the initiative’s groundbreaking national television premiere airing today, visit www.getschooled.com.

David Winston, a Republican pollster, agrees. He says that Obama “has to do a kind of reset on health care and figure out if he can regain the initiative on the policy debate, since he clearly lost the month of August.” Winston cautions, however, that Obama has bigger problems than his message. “One of the difficult stress points of a majority coalition is how you keep your base and the people beyond the base together to sustain that coalition. Health care is the first clear example where the two have divergent views.”

If Republicans are heartened by Obama’s summer stumble, that doesn’t mean they should relax. Republicans, says Winston, should work to create a “positive policy choice”…

To read the full article, access nationalreview.com

“This is his big moment in managing a majority coalition,” said David Winston, a GOP strategist who compared Obama’s challenge to those faced — unsuccessfully — by three other former leaders: Clinton on healthcare, President George W. Bush on Social Security, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the budget battle that shut down part of the government during Clinton’s first term.

“Every one of them overreached,” said Winston. “But the question is, do they understand they have overreached? And what do they do in response?”

Access the LA Times article here