US News
Affluent men showed greatest disillusionment with Republicans
By DPA
Nov 10, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - Two days after US elections handed control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats, a poll released Thursday showed that Republicans lost support from their traditional base, but the largest drop was among affluent men.

While 60 per cent of economically privileged men chose Republicans in 2004, only 46 per cent did so on Tuesday, according to the study conducted by a Democratic polling organization.

The poll also confirmed widespread reports that displeasure with the war in Iraq drove most of the voters to the polls: 41 per cent of voters in their study saw the Iraq war as one of the most important issues in picking a candidate. Among those who voted for Democrats, 75 per cent listed the war as one of the deciding factors.

'It was a protest election around Iraq above all issues,' Stan Greenberg, a pollster with Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, said at a press conference Thursday.

The researchers conducted interviews with about 2,000 people on election day and the day after, across the country and in areas with key races.

Nearly half of all voters said they were using the election to send a message about being dissatisfied, and 47 per cent of those wanted to send a message that they were upset about Iraq.

But Democrats should not celebrate Americans' newfound love of their party, Greenberg warned.

'Feelings about the parties are overwhelmingly negative,' Greenberg said.

Voters still had an overall negative image of the Democratic party after the elections, but not as low as the Republicans.

This stands in sharp contrast to the 1994 elections, when Republicans swept into control of Congress. At that time, voters had a positive view of both parties after the election.

Democrats also made gains among their core group of supporters, seeing increases in the percentage of voters who identified themselves as minorities, union members, secular and city dwellers.

Republicans, on the other hand saw a decrease in the percentage of voters not only among affluent men, but also among religious faithful, rural people and voters in Southern states fell.

Republicans also lost valuable ground among groups of voters in the middle, including people with post-graduate degrees, young voters, and aging workers.