The Sweep: GOP Still in the Driver’s Seat

New polls push back on the narrative that the Democrats will win the midterms.

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Quote of the Week

“We often think about wave elections, but this year, we may think instead about a ‘waves’ election where unprecedentedly strong crosscurrents push voters in different directions, with an end result that may not be what we expected.”  Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt told NBC’s Mark Murray. 

GOP Still in the Driver’s Seat

The “Dems are winning everything” narrative came on strong a few weeks ago, but as plenty of us have pointed out, it was more wishful thinking combined with an uptick in Democratic voter enthusiasm than an actual change on the ground. The Senate has been and still is a coin flip for Republicans in a cycle in which they’re defending a lot of open seats in swing states (Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina), but the fundamentals haven’t changed:

The Dallas Morning News has Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott 9 points ahead of Democrat Beto O’Rourke—up two points from last month.

A new poll from the Utah Debate Commission shows Republican Sen. Mike Lee with an 11-point lead over his independent challenger Evan McMullin.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ But it is bad news for Trump’s 2024 ambitions. Voters have seen a post-Trump GOP … and they like it. Or at least half of them do.”

    Rethinking that bet, Sarah?

    I’ve long held that the conventional wisdom will shift in Washington instantly at some indeterminate point in time, and that without any self-awareness it will go from, “it’s all about TRUMP all the time” to “come on? Trump? So passé. We’ve known for ages he was through.”

    Sarah, I think you will make a similar shift with perhaps a little more self-awareness. You seem to be pretty plugged in to the word on the street.

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    BrettH

    Enjoyed the read, thanks ladies. Fortunately work keeps me so busy that November will be here before I know what happened. That said, my trigger finger hitting the mute button on my AppleTV remote is dialed in with precision as the political adds start to increase in volume. I prefer to ignore hollow rhetoric that assumes I'm a moron.

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    Michael Darwin

    I know we like to talk about elections in waves, but I tend to think in terms of tides. A presidential election usually brings with it a high tide for the winning party. Parties do poorly in midterms because tides eventually recede.

    The problem is that the tides have been all messed up since Trump. 2016 Trump won the election, but the GOP lost seats in the House and Senate, but not enough to flip either chamber. That shallow 2016 tide confused the 2018 results, with the Dems gaining in the House but the GOP gaining in the Senate. Then in 2020, Biden won (really) but down the ballot we got an inverse of 2018, with the GOP gaining in the House and losing a few seats in the Senate. Another shallow tide that likely portends another election cycle with mixed results.

    From my election-hobbyist seat, I think this can largely be attributed to the general dislike of both parties and candidates. No one expected Trump to win, but few wanted a united Her government. In 2018, people may not have liked Trump, but they were turned off by the Dem antics since his election, especially in the Kavanaugh hearings. In 2020, people were willing to dump Trump, but Biden had done nothing to make a case for himself outside being "not Trump".

    So now what? Biden isn't doing great, and Trump isn't on the ballot. Or is he? Trump is insisting its still about Trump. Will people listen, or will they make this about Biden? I think we're looking at yet more muddy results.

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  4. Raincheck

    Perhaps the flip in the Trump/GOP polling reflects the fact that the whole party has gotten more Trump-like?

    In the past Trump voters were choosing between Trump and Ryan or Romney. Now they can like the party as much as Trump, if it is the party of DeSantis and Vance and, well, there are too many to name.

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  5. Jeffrey S. Goldberg

    Oz will have no trouble defeating Fetterman in November.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Kevin M. James

    An excellent edition of this fine newsletter, appreciated as always...but the reason I’m swinging by the comments just now is to push back on the ever-growing overuse of “push back”.

    The subhead here has a new poll pushing back on a narrative. So the narrative started it by pushing the poll? The poll has its own agency in return? How bizarre.

    I’m begging all of you here at my beloved Dispatch: make a conscious effort to cut back on all the pushing back. If you’re going to disagree with someone, say that you disagree. If you draw different conclusions, say that you have different conclusions. If new data calls a prediction into question, say it calls it into question.

    Let’s stop with all the pushing, and communicate and reason with each other like intelligent adults who have gotten over the juvenile impulse to react to disagreement as if it were physical aggression like being shoved.

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    1. Acre00

      How do you feel about good old Devil's Advocacy? I tend to like it because it can lead to a better argument for one's actual position and can lead to more interesting conversations generally, but I'd be interested in your take

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        Kevin M. James

        That does indeed tend to be helpful and productive...especially when in a group that has a tendency to converge on similar opinions.

        (And many of our Dispatch folks are pretty decent at it--see the frequent efforts at "steel-manning".)

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  7. Avatar photo
    Norman Shatkin

    The price of gasoline is strongly affected -- pretty much everywhere -- by the taxes charged by the local state and/or municipality. I save money driving across the Hudson River for gas, even though I pay a toll and, of course, burn gas getting there, because of the different county tax rates.

    So when you write that NV or AZ have gas prices over $4, you haven't really said much until you say what they were paying a few months ago. I filled up for $3.45 today, down from about $5.00 awhile back. There was a time when $3.45 a gallon would have been outrageous, but right now they're hardly something to make me mad at Joe Biden.

    I'm not quite sure how it happened -- Biden didn't really do much other than tap the strategic reserve, which I'm sure didn't do a lot -- but if Republicans are expecting gas prices to win the election for them in November they're in for a big surprise.

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  8. Eric Marfin

    I don’t agree that there ever was a “Dems are winning everything” position. There was a “Dems are rising in the polls” position—and that position is *clearly* supported by the facts. Be it the generic Congressional ballot or Biden’s approval numbers, the data reflects a clear post-Dobbs trend to greater support for Democratic candidates (or, more accurately, Democrats as a general principle since polling is rarely released for specific House races).

    Nate Cohn wrote about early signs that polling in 2022 is different than polling in 2020 or 2016 (worth noting that 2018 polling is largely ignored in this piece, which is not advisable since it was the most recent midterm, with trump off the ballot in a literal way). More Republicans are answering polls this year. That might have something to do with the fact that there isn’t a high profile candidateGOP candidate arguing loudly that the polls are rigged and—like literally everything else—“rigged” to ensure his destruction.

    As an exiled member of the Republican Party, I’m not particularly worked up about pieces, like this, claiming that everything is good and that actually democrats will lose control of both chambers. By all means, keep it up! It’s going to be a blowout! No need to worry about the GOP in 2022! Of course, Sarah isn’t an activist so she is rightfully unconcerned about the political implications of this piece. If only all journalists held that view across all of our networks.

    The thing that concerns me most about this piece—and where, unlike GOP control of both chambers, Sarah and I share a common goal—is that it dismisses Trump’s 30% approval as a sign that he is headed for defeat in 2024 primaries (if current trends hold) and that it is evidence that his influence is waning. In the 2015 primary season, Trump routinely stalled out at 30% GOP support. Fast forward 6 years and the entire party sits at his feet. Voices of dissent are called RINO’s by the more moderate voices in the MAGA movement. The more extreme voices characterize democrats as an existential threat to democracy, which has slowly moved from the fringes into GOP orthodoxy, where it has been present as Official Party Dogma since 2010.

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    1. Acre00

      You're absolutely right about Trump's numbers. The nightmare scenario to me is a repeat of 2015. However, I think there's good reason to be hopeful that 2023 may be different. Trump is no longer an insurgent or in his own lane; he's an established candidate and part of the establishment in his own right. He has a record to defend.

      If another candidate starts running in the same lane as him, Desantis or Abbott, say, they could split his vote. Probably not a whole lot, but if Desantis peels 5% away from Trump it would likely be enough to deny him the nomination if the non-Trump part of the party can coalesce around one or two candidates

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      1. Eric Marfin

        Good points!

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  9. Avatar photo
    Frank Lee

    Here is the actual record of legalized abortion laws and interests with Europe compared to the US Democrats and Republicans. See if you can spot the outliers.

    Austria 13 Weeks
    Belgium 12 Weeks
    Bulgaria 12 Weeks
    Croatia 10 Weeks
    Cyprus 12 Weeks
    Czech Republic 12 Weeks
    Denmark 12 Weeks
    Estonia 11 Weeks
    Finland 12 Weeks
    France 14 Weeks
    Germany 12 Weeks
    Greece 12 Weeks
    Hungary 12 Weeks
    Italy 12 Weeks
    Latvia 12 Weeks
    Liechtenstein TOTAL BAN
    Lithuania 12 Weeks
    Luxembourg 12 Weeks
    Malta TOTAL BAN
    Netherlands 24 Weeks
    Norway 12 Weeks
    Poland TOTAL BAN
    Portugal 10 Weeks
    Republic of Ireland 12 Weeks
    Romania 14 Weeks
    Slovakia 12 Weeks
    Slovenia 10 Weeks
    Spain 14 Weeks
    Sweden 18 Weeks
    Switzerland 12 Weeks
    United Kingdom 24 Weeks

    AMERICAN DEMOCRATS 36 Weeks+
    AMERICAN REPUBLICANS 15 Weeks

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    1. BadgerBill

      Again, “American Republicans” have no such position. It may be your position, it is nowhere, no how the “Republican position”. There is no such thing as the “Republican position”. Just stop making stuff up. Please. Go. Away.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Frank Lee

        Graham's bill pushes the debate toward the center. 75% of voters approve of a 15 week restriction. I cannot help it that you are a radical leftist that wants full rights to dispatch a new baby up to birth and possibly beyond.

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    Steve Gordon

    Slight pushback here on the importance of abortion as a voter issue. In WA, our federal candidates have run tons of ads casting all Republicans as supporting an extreme ban, even though most candidates don't support a total ban (and the GOP hasn't had the ammo to answer back with effective TV ads). The issue now shows as the top one in polling across the state. Sarah/Audrey's points on polling error notwithstanding, in June it was clocking in as the biggest issue for 3% of voters, now it's at 18%, a 6x increase. If you bundle up all economic issues, yes they total up to more than 18%, but that's still A LOT of movement on the abortion issue in just 3 months.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Frank Lee

      The dishonest corporate (aka liberal) media is doing a number on people... rigging and influencing elections through propaganda masquerading as news.

      Goebbels would have been dancing a jig seeing all this power the Democrats have to inflame the anger of the stupid with repeated lies and obfuscation.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Scarlette Tarte

        Yeah, that's it, Frank. Keep telling women they are just stupid and being manipulated by the media for caring about abortion rights.

        That will win em to your side.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Frank Lee

          Who said I was talking about women? You have a bad gender bias problem.

          GOP bill is for 15 weeks. Better than most of liberal Europe. And it would cover the red states with much more restrictive bans. No European country allows unrestricted abortion.

          How many of those screaming upset over abortion rights know theses things?

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            Scarlette Tarte

            Most know it.

            Republicans always think their opponents just don't "know" something, and that must be why their opponents don't think like them.

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      2. Avatar photo
        Steve Gordon

        To be clear, these are our campaign polls, NOT public polling. That being said, the legacy media is happy to parrot a lot of the Dem talking points in general, and on abortion specifically.

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