Memo to Democrats: Your attempts to paint the GOP as “extreme” aren’t working

The Hill reports what is no doubt troubling news for Democrat politicos and strategists hoping to, with the help of the MSM, successfully paint Republicans as “extremists” in an election year where Democrats are at risk of losing their majorities in the US House and Senate:

Likely voters in battleground districts see extremists as having a more dominant influence over the Democratic Party than they do over the GOP.

This result comes from The Hill 2010 Midterm Election Poll, which found that 44 percent of likely voters say the Democratic Party is more dominated by its extreme elements, whereas 37 percent say it’s the Republican Party that is more dominated by extremists.

The revelations in a survey of 10 toss-up congressional districts across the country point to problems for Democrats, who are trying to motivate a disillusioned base and appeal to independents moving to the GOP ahead of the Nov. 2 election.

The polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland conducted the survey, contacting 4,047 likely voters by phone between Oct. 2 and Oct. 7. The margin of error for this sample is 1.5 percent.

More than one in every five Democrats (22 percent) in The Hill’s survey said their party was more dominated than the GOP by extreme views. The equivalent figure among Republicans is 11 percent.

Results for independent voters reflected the larger sample. Forty-three percent of likely independent voters said the Democratic Party is more dominated by its extreme elements, compared to 37 percent who thought the GOP had fallen under the sway of extreme views.

The figures by party do come with one caveat: Because the voter sampling size is smaller, the margin of error by party is 4.5 percent.

I’m sure Howard “the Tea Party are a bunch of a extremists” Dean isn’t the only prominent Democrat who will have an upset tummy after reading this today …