New Major Polls Show Democrats With Huge Generic Ballot Lead In Midterm
Former Sen. Sherrod Brown
Facing grim odds in the midterm elections, Republicans had been holding out hope that as Election Day drew near, polls would tighten and the GOP’s odds at keeping their congressional majorities would improve. But with just one full day left until October—the point in an election cycle when voter decisions are hardened—that hope is gone.
A spate of polling released Tuesday brought only more grim news for Republicans, whose optimism that President Donald Trump’s midterm convention would narrow the polling gap has now been dashed less than three weeks after the event wrapped.
At the national level, a new survey from Angus Reid Global showed Democrats with a 16-percentage-point on the generic ballot, which asks voters what party they will vote for in their congressional districts. That aligns with a finding in the latest YouGov/The Economist poll, which asked a similar question but used candidate names and found Democrats with a 15-point lead among likely voters.
If the final outcome of this year’s midterms is close to those results, it will be a blue tsunami the likes of which haven’t been seen for decades.
Of course, with gerrymandering corruptly slanting House maps toward the GOP, a massive majority for Democrats is unlikely to occur in November. But if Democrats do in fact pull off a 15-point win in the House popular vote, Republicans in seats no one currently sees as competitive could lose, and the GOP’s control of the Senate would likely be gone.
It wasn’t just national polling that brought bad news for Republicans and good news for Democrats.
Two Ohio surveys dropped on Tuesday, showing Democrats with big leads in the Buckeye State, which has trended heavily toward Republicans in recent years.
A Marist University poll found Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown leading Republican Sen. Jon Husted by eight points. Worse for the GOP, a plurality of voters in the state (41 percent)—which Trump carried by double digits two years ago—said their vote was intended to be a rebuke of the president.
The Marist poll also had Democrat Amy Acton leading Republican Vivek Ramaswamy by six points in the governor’s race. If Acton pulls it out, Democrats would win the state’s governor’s mansion for the first time since 2006.
Meanwhile, a Suffolk University/USA Today survey also found Acton ahead of Ramaswamy, this time by nine points. The pollsters also surveyed the Senate race but have not yet released results for that contest. However, if Acton is leading by that much, it’s almost certain that Brown is up in that poll, too.
As polls paint a disturbing picture for the GOP, party operatives are feeding angry quotes to media outlets to vent their frustrations.
“Fucking [JD] Vance was in Kansas … not a good sign,” an unnamed “Texas-based GOP consultant” told Politico of the vice president’s campaign travel. “We’re on defense everywhere. The map’s expanding for [Democrats], and there’s a limit to what the administration can do.”
“This is the week where it felt like the bottom started falling out in earnest,” Colin Reed, a Republican strategist, told The Wall Street Journal. “President Trump is the Republican Party right now, and by virtue of his lower approval ratings, the entire party is dealing with that political reality.”
Others are still clinging to delusions that things could improve.
One unnamed “Senate Republican operative” told The Washington Sun, “Is it a shitty environment? Absolutely. Does it seem to be getting worse? Absolutely. Is it possible to keep the majority? It’s still possible.”
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
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