Democrats’ internal polling shows that Republicans have a substantial lead heading into the midterm elections, and unless a course correction is made, disaster looms for the controlling party.
Politico reported the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee leaked generic ballot survey conducted in late January finds Republicans with a 4 percent lead.
This gap is fairly consistent with Real Clear Politics average of polls, in which the GOP holds a 3.4 percent advantage, and that FiveThirtyEight daily tracking survey, showing the Republicans leading by 2.2 percent.
Gallup reported last month that party identification shifted dramatically nationwide in 2021 from a nine-point Democratic advantage to a five-point Republican lead, a 14-point swing. The GOP now has its greatest lead since 1991.
The DCCC argued in a leaked presentation accompanying its internal polling results that the GOP has launched “alarmingly potent” attacks regarding issues like critical race theory, defunding the the police and border security, Politico reported.
Trending:
Of course, another way to view it is that the Democrats have taken positions on the issues that are very unpopular.
“If Democrats don’t answer Republican hits, [DCCC] operatives warned, the GOP’s lead on the generic ballot balloons to 14 points from 4 points — a dismal prediction for Democrats when the GOP only needs to win five seats to seize back the majority,” Politico reported.
“The internal presentation underscored some of those anxieties: The GOP hits are most effective with center-left voters, independents and Hispanic voters, demographic groups that Democrats have struggled to attract in recent years.”
President Joe Biden’s sagging approval rating — currently 40 percent in the RCP average — is a further source of Democrats’ midterm fears.
Do you believe Democrats are focused on the wrong things?
Yes: 0% (0 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
Historically when the president’s approval rating has dropped below 50 percent, his party has consistently, going back decades, faced a blowout in the House of Representatives in the midterms, which included a loss of control of the chamber.
For example, Democrats lost 54 seats in 1994 when then-President Bill Clinton’s approval was at 48 percent.
Republicans gave up 30 seats in 2006 when then-President George W. Bush’s approval rating fell to 37 percent.
Four years later, in the 2010 midterms, then-President Barack Obama’s approval stood at 45 percent, and the GOP picked up 63 seats.
Most recently, in 2018, when 40 percent of Americans approved of then-President Donald Trump’s handling of the job, Republicans lost 40 seats in the House.
The DCCC pollsters concluded that voters are not generally opposed to Democratic policies, but candidates are not defending them well.
“Rather, Democrats need to demonstrate they fully understand and care about stressors in people’s lives” and focus on the issues “without stoking divisive cultural debates,” one of the presentation slides said, according to Politico.
Something that has clearly been a cause of stress in people’s lives are COVID policies — particularly those related to schools.
If the 2021 off-year elections demonstrated anything in places like Virginia and New Jersey, it’s that the majority of parents want their kids in class, without masks.
On Wednesday, recently-minted GOP Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed legislation ending school mask mandates statewide.
WATCH: Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin signs legislation BANNING mask mandates in Virginia schools.
“Today we are reestablishing and restoring power back to parents.” pic.twitter.com/wl5dJn6PHK
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 16, 2022
Despite Biden wining Virginia by 10 percentage points in 2020, Youngkin carried the state in November by two percent.
In doing so he garnered 55 percent of the Latino vote to Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s 43 percent, according to exit polling by The Associated Press.
Even deep blue California appears to be shifting.
Though Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom fought off an effort to recall him in September with approximately 62 percent of the vote, his approval rating as of this week stands at 48 percent in a poll conducted by the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.
The survey found he is underwater with independents, with only 41 percent support. His backing has even weakened among Democrats at 74 percent approval.
“If we want to talk in terms of business, even since the recall this is a different market. It’s a different consumer,” California GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Cordie Williams told The Western Journal in a recent interview.
The Marine Corps veteran pointed to the governor’s move in December to reinstitute a statewide mask mandate, which expired Tuesday. The Newsom administration kept in place the mask requirement for schools.
In October, after surviving the recall, Newsom also directed that all eligible students must be vaccinated to attend in-class instruction — the first state in the nation to impose such a mandate.
Kids are the unifying message across party lines, Williams contended.
“Parents should have the right to control what goes in their kids’ brains and what goes in their kids’ veins,” he said. “And that’s the reason why we can win.”
A validation of Williams’ argument came in San Francisco Tuesday night, when three members of the city’s school district were recalled by over 70 percent of the voters in each case.
“The recall movement first gained steam more than a year ago as San Francisco Unified School District students remained stuck in distance learning, even when state and county officials gave the green light to reopen and while other public education systems were returning to in-person instruction,” the San Francisco Examiner reported.
“Calls grew more intense for the removal of the eligible board members when the board prioritized, while schools were still closed, the renaming of 44 campuses — whose names, such as Abraham Lincoln and Dianne Feinstein, it said, honored figures linked to racism and sexism,” the news outlet added.
Other school names the board apparently found objectionable were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, Theodore Roosevelt and naturalist and author John Muir, according to The New York Times.
After public pushback, including from Democrat Mayor London Breed, the school board put the renaming plans on hold.
A final straw came when the board changed admission to the city’s academically rigorous Lowell High School from merit-based to a lottery system to promote more diversity.
The school’s student body is currently 50 percent Asian.
The change from merit-based was a galvanizing moment for Asian community in the city to get the polls, the Examiner reported.
Democrats have a problem: They’ve come to believe in some pretty radical, un-American, and — it turns out — unpopular stuff.
It’s going to take more than some good talking points to avert disaster in the fall.
They will actually have to repent of their ways and return to the bedrock foundations of individual liberty and opportunity.
The late-President John Kennedy articulated in his inaugural address in 1961 America’s core belief so well, saying, “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”
