New York Times political analyst Nate Cohn believes the Democrats’ summer bounce in the polls may be over and that voter sentiment has returned to where it was in April “when Republicans held the edge.”
Cohn begins with a graph of average weekly search interest from Google Trends which shows a dramatic spike in searches for “abortion” that peaks on June 24, the date the Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade. By late July, the post-Roe bounce has nearly dissipated, but remains slightly above pre-decision levels.
By late August, the line representing searches for the “economy” overtakes abortion for the first time since the Roe decision and continues to rise steadily. As the abortion line returns to pre-decision levels, the gap between the lines grows modestly.
Cohn notes that Democrats were riding high this summer. In addition to the overturn of Roe, gas prices were falling. The party had finally scored several legislative wins. Additionally, the primetime Jan. 6 hearings and the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago in August returned attention to former President Donald Trump. These developments combined to dilute the enthusiastic generic congressional polls we’d seen in the spring.
Against all odds, Democrats were back in the game. The party was energized. Until, as Cohn puts it, the political winds began blowing in the Republicans’ favor again.
“As those galvanizing factors fall into the rearview mirror, the electorate’s gaze appears to be drifting back toward the earlier set of issues,” he wrote. Citing recent unfavorable inflation news, new interest rate hikes, and a plummeting stock market, he concedes, this “might be more than a return to the politics of April: It may represent a meaningful shift in the national political environment.”
Sounding a bit like he’s apologizing to his readers for having to deliver some very bad news, Cohn launches into a series of equivocal remarks. For example, he tells readers that, except for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has recently moved ahead of his Democratic challenger, there aren’t many signs that the shifting winds have begun to reshape the race for Congress.
But that’s not true. Senate polls have tightened in the weeks since Labor Day. And the changes favor the GOP.
RealClearPolitics recently moved the race for the open Senate seat in Ohio from the “toss-up” column to “leans Republican.” Utah Senate candidate Adam Laxalt (R) has taken the lead over incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D). Although Democrat John Fetterman still tops Republican rival Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania senate race by an average of 4.4%, that’s down from 6.8%. And, while the gap between Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and his Republican opponent, Blake Masters, stands at 5.4%, the polls have tightened over the past month by several points.
“The so-called generic ballot polls, which ask whether voters prefer Democrats or Republicans, haven’t really changed quite yet. Democrats still enjoy a slight lead, according to FiveThirtyEight,” Cohn writes. Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight, is a liberal whose star has fallen since his disastrous forecasting in the 2016 election. A more accurate gage, the RCP average of generic polls, shows Republicans leading by one point on Thursday.
He cites the ABC/Washington Post poll that showed Republicans leading by 5% among likely voters, which “may prove to be an outlier, or perhaps it’s the first sign of a material shift in the race.” As a buffer, he points to a CBS News poll released at the same time that showed Republicans ahead by just 1%.
Cohn neglects to mention the biggest takeaway from the ABC/Washington Post poll: In competitive congressional districts, Republicans led Democrats by a margin of 55% to 34% among all voters. Republican strategist Karl Rove explains that Democratic voters “are more clumped together geographically. A good performance for their party on a national generic ballot might not be enough in competitive regions.”
The enthusiasm gap between the parties favors the Republicans, he concedes. CBS found “Republicans were five points likelier than Democrats to say they would ‘definitely’ vote, 79 percent to 74 percent. Similarly, ABC/Post found 81 percent of Republicans “absolutely certain” to vote compared with 75 percent of Democrats.” He notes this is a major shift from a NYT/Siena poll released two weeks ago which showed Republican with a 1% advantage.
All of this is good news for the GOP. Most of the polling misses in the last several elections have overestimated the strength of Democratic candidates. If current generic polls are showing even a slight lead for Republicans, that bodes very well for the party.
A previous version of this article appeared in The Washington Examiner.
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“Against all odds, Democrats were back in the game.”
So says Nate Cohn. The New York Times says something in the political news section, and 99.9% of the time it is wrong or deceitful. Cohn may just be trying to steer wayward Democrats to vote…
and to cheat, once again.
The only way the Democrats are possibly back in the game is if Republicans and all other disaffected voters forget how we got here.