Senate Polling Update: Things Are Starting to Look Promising for A Democratic Majority
August 19, 2022
We are just beginning to see late summer polling on Senate races. So far, the news is good for Democrats.1 Nominees in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are opening big leads in what would be pick-up states. Democratic incumbents in Arizona and New Hampshire look like they have comfortable leads, while incumbents in Nevada and Georgia hold onto slim leads (although a recent poll had Warnock up by ten points in the Peach State). The race for the open seat currently held by Republican Richard Burr in North Carolina is even and a few polls are showing Rep. Val Demings (D) catching up to and passing Sen. Marco Rubio (R) in Florida. And in Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan (D) is beating Republican nominee JD Vance. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Republicans were making investment decisions that suggest they think Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin might be lost. And yesterday we learned that Sen. Mitch McConnell told the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce that he thinks Republicans will have a difficult time winning the Senate this fall.
Source: FiveThirtyEight.
This is all pretty amazing news in an election cycle in which we have heard continually for the entire year that the Republicans were winning. McConnell understands part of the problem; Republicans have nominated some really bad candidates and that makes a big difference in statewide elections (as opposed to House districts, where lunatics seem to get regularly elected). Vance has turned out to be a terrible candidate. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania seems to have thought winning the Republican nomination meant he won the election. He vacationed abroad and in Palm Beach after the primary and has been an incredibly easy mark for Lt. Governor John Fetterman’s (D) online trolling. Republicans haven’t nominated someone who seems so comically out of touch with regular people for a serious office since maybe George H.W. Bush in 1992. And Arizonan Republicans must have all agreed to just give up by nominating a poster child for everything wrong about American politics today. Sen. Mark Kelly (D) looks to win the race easily.2
Lousy candidates are not the Republicans’ only problem. They had hoped to ride on the back on runaway inflation back into power. Things have not worked out as planned. First, the economy is actually doing quite well – at least in terms of hiring and unemployment. While the stock market had some rocky times, it appears to be trending back up again. Second, inflation did not increase at all in July. Yes, it is still high, but it is not running away. And gas prices – a contributor to overall inflation – have been falling consistently for two months now. You don’t hear many right wingers screaming about gas prices anymore, do you? Third, the Gilead Supreme Court is living up to expectations. They won’t let states regulate guns, but they insist only states can regulate abortion. Think that’s a bit of overstatement? So what? That’s how voters are seeing it, and they don’t like it. Sure, all these school shootings are because of lax security and not the easy access to military grade weapons. Think most people believe that? They don’t. Republicans got so giddy about the Dobbs decision – which, mark my words, will go down in history as one of the most poorly-reasoned and dishonest decisions ever; right alongside Dred Scott – that they started talking about making contraception illegal and rolling back all the rights gay folks have gained in the past decade or so. They even said that when they got back into power, they were going to make abortion illegal nationally. And then the horror stories started, and people quickly saw what this was really about – controlling women’s bodies.3
The polling on guns and abortion is not good for Republicans, but we’ve seen that kind of issue polling not produce electoral results in the past. Why not now? First, it’s not theoretical or tinkering around the edges anymore. Roe has been overruled and states are not just outlawing abortion, they are criminalizing it, and they are making no exceptions for even the life of the mother. Medical professionals are refusing to perform some procedures on pregnant women for fear of being prosecuted. It’s ugly. What’s also ugly is 19 dead kids and teachers at the hands of one 18-year old with a legally-purchased AR-15 while dozens of cops stood by too scared to intervene.
Who knows if finally the mass murder aided and abetted by Republican Senators and Congressmen (and, yes, a few Democrats) will finally have an electoral reckoning from a scared and weary public? But we see that Dobbs is motivating voters. Two weeks ago, Kansas voters overwhelmingly voted to keep abortion a state constitutional right. Turnout was high, which is especially notable because this was a primary election in which there were no high-profile Democratic races bringing out voters. The latest voter registration data we have shows large gender gaps in registration patterns across red states. Women are registering to vote in far greater numbers than men right now – in fact, in Idaho the gap is 40 points.
President Biden has had some significant legislative victories this summer, including a few bipartisan bills. His approval rating is still low, but increasing. However, Democratic candidates – particularly Senate candidates – are not being tied down by his low approval rating. This flies in the face of the political conventional wisdom pundits love to throw around. Surely if Biden is unpopular, then Democrats will lose Congress. Right? In today’s highly polarized electorate, it appears that presidential approval ratings and Congressional performance may have become untethered. It is also important to note that a lot of people who will vote for Biden are saying they disapprove of him – something Republicans won’t do for Trump. So, Biden’s low approval ratings are deceptive. I previously wrote about that here.
Okay. So, things look pretty good for Democrats this week as far as the Senate goes. It’s mid-August, so this is a pretty good time for things to start looking good. There, of course, caveats. And they are important ones.
If the final results of the Senate races mirrored the average polling right now, Democrats would hold all of the seats they are defending and pick up 3-5 seats. Sounds pretty good, eh? If these candidates all win, Democrats will not have to break ties constantly or worry about one or two Senators stopping progress. If Fetterman and Demings were in the Senate right now, we would have both voting rights bills the House passed enacted into law already. So this is important.
The problem here is that the topline numbers matter, not the margin. That is, if Ryan gets 47% in November, he will lose the race unless there is a big rush to some third party candidate. To feel confident about these races, we want to see the Democratic candidates routinely polling at or over 50%. We have seen – particularly in presidential races – that undecided voters often break to Republicans at the end of a campaign. They do so because they get nervous and that’s why Republicans spend so much money and time vilifying Democrats. In any case, not all undecideds break the same way so if Ryan is at 47% in the polls, but Vance is at 32%, Ryan looks pretty good because Oz needs so many people to break his way that it could be too much. However, if Vance is at 44% then odds are in a state like Ohio he will beat Ryan on Election Day.
The states in which Republican incumbents are losing – as opposed to open seats – the story is more complicated. Incumbents who poll below 50% are usually considered to be competitive if not in trouble. And the lower they poll, they more troubling it is. That’s probably because (1) voters know them, (2) incumbency does provide some degree of support, and (3) undecided voters are less inclined to take a chance with someone whose governing style they are familiar with but have already refused to support. This means Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (R) is in big trouble. His Democratic opponent, Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, is already polling 50% against him and has a five point lead.4
I will be looking more closely at these races over the coming weeks as more polling data becomes available. You can also check out my Target State Reports as they become available. Arizona’s came out this week and you can find it here.
I am ignoring the analysts in this post (for the most part) and focusing on polling and other factors. As I publish this post, I got an email from Cook Political Report informing that they have moved PA from Toss-up to Lean Democrat. I assume CPR and others are seeing the same things in the polling that I am. I’ll address their projections in a later post after Labor Day. You’ll see their projections for individual races in the Target State Reports that will be posted over the next two weeks.
That doesn’t mean he’ll win in a landslide. The final numbers might even look close, but Kelly’s opponent is not likely to ever threaten to actually win. As I am publishing this post, another poll in Arizona has come out showing Kelly up by eight points
And it is directly related to “White Replacement Theory,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory.
You’ll hear some pundits talk about how Johnson was written off last time but then came back and won. First, he was running against an incumbent, and he was losing in the polling 46-44. Which means his opponent, as an incumbent, was not polling at 50%. Johnson was also considered an establishment Republican six years ago, rather than the embarrassing extremist he is today.