A quick glance at the lay of the land, heading into the weekend. Let's begin with Quinnipiac's latest batch of data on President Biden's job approval and the 2022 generic ballot. The Biden numbers are a bit worse than the Real Clear Politics average, but not by much. Check out the data points on independents and Hispanics in particular:
If the election for the US House was today would you vote GOP/Dem?
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) April 6, 2022
Voters: 47/43
GOP: 94/3
Dem: 3/94
Indie: 42/36
Men: 49/35
Women: 40/50
Whites w/ college: 43/50
Whites w/o college: 61/30
White men: 59/32
White women: 50/42
Whites: 54/38
Black: 8/73
Hispanics: 42/43
Biden's standing is lower among Latinos than voters overall, and Republicans and Democrats are virtually tied among this emerging demographic group. We've been covering the movement of, er, 'LatinX' voters away from Democrats for awhile now, and here's another breadcrumb leading toward the conclusion that the shift is real. Now, from another data set, look at some of these state-level numbers:
NEW: @Civiqs / 04/06/2022
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 7, 2022
Biden Job Approval (-16)
Approve 37%
Disapprove 53
Independents (-36)
Approve 26%
Disapprove 62%
34% - New Mexico
34% - Georgia
35% - Arizona
36% - Nevada
37% - Michigan
38% - Pennsylvania
40% - Wisconsinhttps://t.co/aNSbAOwZcv
The president's national approval level is nearly identical to the Q-poll finding, and even more dismal among indies. But if Biden really winds up at 40 percent or worse in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, it'll be a challenge for Democrats to hold the Senate. Democrats may run a bit ahead of Biden in November -- might -- but if these outcomes are even close to where things settle by the fall, they'd need to run way ahead of Biden. That would require big-time turnout from the base. And that seems...unlikely at the moment:
At the end of October, Republicans held an 11-percentage-point advantage in voter enthusiasm. By January, that margin had ticked up to 14 points. Now, according to the most recent NBC News poll, it has swelled to 17 — a massive advantage that has foreshadowed devastating losses in Congress in prior years. The latest poll would be bad enough for Democrats. But it’s the trend line that is especially grim, seemingly impervious to a series of events — including President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address and the nomination of a judge to the Supreme Court — that Democrats had predicted might improve their candidates’ prospects in the fall...The NBC poll wasn’t a one-off. A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll on Wednesday registered a double-digit spread between the share of Democrats and Republicans who are “extremely enthusiastic” about voting in the midterms and a smaller — but still measurable — gap when accounting for voters who say they are only “very” enthusiastic.
Perhaps the Civiqs findings above are too bleak. Perhaps not:
The #Jersey Report:
— David Catanese (@davecatanese) April 7, 2022
55% approval - @GovMurphy
53% approval - @CoryBooker
45% approval - @JoeBiden
42% approval - @SenatorMenendezhttps://t.co/5YVKmCMMtJhttps://t.co/5YVKmCMMtJ
New Jersey is a state Biden carried by 16 points in 2020. If he's in the mid-40's there, it's not a leap at all to hit far worse approval in Georgia or Pennsylvania. And Nevada, which hasn't gone red for president since 2004, is looking especially shaky for the Dems these days:
"Despite rapid diversification of the electorate—Nevada went from three-tenths of percentage more Democratic than the nation as a whole in 2016 to 2 points more Republican in 2020."https://t.co/wNtok1tUGU
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) April 7, 2022
I'll leave you with two more data points. One is another poll, in which an incumbent Republican governor appears to be weathering the storm of intense opposition from both Trump and the Left. The other is one of those historical outliers that tend to pop up as political waves build:
In the #GAGov race, incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp leads David Perdue by 11 points in the primary. Kemp leads Stacey Abrams by 7 in a would-be general election matchup in this survey. https://t.co/rdn34Y4oBK
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) April 6, 2022
ELECTION ALERT:
— Election Wizard ???? (@ElectionWiz) April 6, 2022
Samantha Kerkman becomes the first-ever Republican Kenosha County Executive.
Gosh, why does Kenosha sound familiar?
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