Poll: Democrats' 2018 Double-digit Lead Is Gone

Leah Barkoukis | January 22, 2018 8:15 AM

The Democrats’ lead over Republicans on a generic 2018 election ballot has narrowed, a new poll has found.

According to a CNN survey, Democrats have a 5-point lead, with 49 percent of respondents saying they’d support Democrats on a generic congressional ballot. Forty-four percent of registered voters said they’d support Republicans.

The latest poll narrows the 18-point lead Democrats held over Republicans when the survey was conducted in December, at which point 56 percent of respondents said they’d choose Democrats while 38 percent said they’d vote for the Republican candidate.

The survey comes as support for the Republican tax law is improving.

The New York Times/SurveyMonkey poll pegged support for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at 46 percent, with 49 percent disapproving. Thirty-eight percent approved in a Marist survey for NPR and PBS's NewsHour. In a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, support for the bill climbed 6 points to 30 percent.
All told, these ratings represent an improvement from the barely one quarter of American voters who supported the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in late December when the package cleared Congress on a narrow, party-line vote (all Democrats voted “no”) and was signed by President Trump. […]
In the New York Times poll, the 46 percent approval for the Republican tax bill revealed a 9-point gain from December; the Marist survey for NPR and PBS’s NewsHour showed a 10-point jump.
(Washington Examiner)

A separate Washington Post/ABC News poll found Democrats still have double-digit lead over Republicans, with 51 percent of registered voters saying they'd choose a Democratic congressional candidate for the House if the election were being held today. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they'd support a Republican over a Democrat.