How Scared Should Democrats Be About the Midterms? - Vanity Fair

A new New York Times poll shows a massive swing over the past month among independent women to Republicans.

October 17, 2022

IRVINE CA OCTOBER 14 U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on lowering costs for American families at Irvine Valley...

Over the summer, amid the ongoing fallout of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and a successful legislative stretch for Joe Biden and his party, a sense of midterm optimism took hold among Democrats: Perhaps November wouldn’t be as ugly as some had forecasted? But as the election has neared, their previous doom and gloom has begun to seep in once more. The latest bad omen? A New York Times/Siena poll out Monday that has suggested Republicans are entering the final weeks of the race with an edge over Democrats, as economic fears surge to the top of voters’ minds. Most concerning for Democrats in the poll is the huge swing over the past month among women who identify as independents. The same poll in September found them favoring Democrats by 14 points; in Monday’s poll, though, they preferred Republicans by 18 points, even though the GOP remains out of step with most Americans on abortion rights.

“That doesn’t really have a lot to do with my decision,” one voter, who opposed the overturn of Roe but nevertheless may vote Republican this fall, told the Times. “I’m more worried about other things.”

The numbers are concerning for the Democrats, who are trying to hang onto the narrowest of majorities on Capitol Hill in a climate with some of the highest possible stakes. If they lose the House, the Senate, or both, they’re not only looking at two years of legislative obstruction. They’re facing the unprecedented danger of an election denier majority. “Nothing less than freedom and democracy are on the ballot,” as Hakeem Jeffries, chair of the House Democratic caucus, wrote Monday. Concerns about the future of democracy, about Americans’ longstanding rights — these should be election-defining issues this cycle. But Republicans have capitalized on more bad news about inflation, among other things, to stay on the offensive, wielding a bleak national mood to their electoral ends. “Everybody’s hurting right now,” as one GOP voter put it to the Times.

Republicans, of course, have had little to offer in the way of actual solutions, but midterm trends tend to favor the party not currently in power. Earlier in the cycle, those historical headwinds had some prognosticators warning of a red wave. The latest polling in the Times and elsewhere doesn’t suggest the kind of 2010-like bloodbath the most aggressive predictions had floated — the Times poll shows Republicans holding a just four-point advantage over Democratic congressional candidates, 49 to 45 — but the numbers should give cause for alarm. In addition to the GOP edge, the poll suggests that top Democratic issues, including abortion and gun control, have been superseded by economic worries, and that Biden’s improved, but still low approval ratings may be hurting his party down the ballot.

But if the poll should elicit concern among Democrats, it shouldn’t inspire dread. As polling expert Natalie Jackson pointed out, some of the results of the Times poll — particularly the shocking shift among independent women — could be a function of its limited sample size; a survey of 792 voters, an even smaller number of whom are independent-identifying women, could see some sizable swings.

Twitter content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

That’s not to say the Times poll is wrong — even if you ignore the eye-popping 32 point swing among independent women, the narrow Republican lead it shows tracks with other recent polls. But perhaps the biggest takeaway from recent surveys is what has always been clear: That control of Washington is likely to hinge on what is effectively a handful of votes, and that Democrats can’t take any of those votes for granted if they want to keep an increasingly extreme GOP from returning to power.