"It looks as though the anger that has been boiling up the last couple of months is going to lead to a pretty high turnout from Republicans and from people who are concerned about increased spending," Altmire said Monday evening during an appearance on Fox Business Network.
"And I do think that if the results show Republicans have a pretty good night, that probably is going to lead some Democrats to think that, going into next year, we need to take a second look at the way that we've done a lot of bills we've addressed up to this point," the Pennsylvania congressman added.
Blitzer: ... our new CNN Opinion Research poll that shows the president enjoys a 54% approval rating with a 45% disapproval. Let's bring in our senior political analyst Gloria Borger who's looking at all these numbers.
This approval rating. Does it help him and does it help Democrats go forward? Because 53 percent's still a good number.
Borger: Let's put it this way Wolf. It doesn't hurt Democrats. But this is a personal approval rating for President Obama and that doesn't necessarily translate into an approval rating for congressional Democrats.
And here's the real problem they've got right now. And that is that all the intensity and enthusiasm is on the Republican side. Our poll shows that Republicans are 5% more enthusiastic about their candidates than democrats. If you go back to the last election, the 2008 presidential, Democrats had a 19% lead on enthusiasm, so that's a big drop for them Wolf.
Blitzer: I should say 54% approval rating. Gloria stand by for a moment. Also in our brand new poll, there's this: when registered voters were asked who they would vote for in congress in the next election, they favored Democrats over Republicans 50% to 44% Republican.
As Media Matters for America has noted (here and here), Matthews has repeatedly inflated Bush's likeability ratings. Appearing on the March 1 edition of NBC's Today, Matthews falsely suggested that until a new CBS News poll indicated otherwise, Bush had personal likeability numbers "going for him." In fact, Bush's favorability ratings have been low for some time; they were low when Matthews said in November 2005 that "Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left."From the March 15 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:
MATTHEWS: I always thought Bush was more popular than his policies. I keep saying it, and I keep being wrong on this. Bush is not popular. I'm amazed when 50 percent of the people don't like him -- just don't like this guy. Thirty-nine percent like him. Are you surprised? Does that fit with the world you walk in?