The Democrats’ summer surge may be coming to an end, with polls in key races across the country tightening with less than three weeks to go before the midterm elections.
Not only are Republican senatorial candidates in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere gaining ground, but Republicans are also seeing the tides turn on general ballot measures.
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“I’m wishing the election were in August,” Matt Bennett of Third Way, a center-left group, told Politico. “I think we peaked a little early.”
Democrats were facing bleak midterm prospects with rising inflation, crime, and a dip in approval ratings for President Joe Biden at the beginning of the year. Six Democratic senators were at risk of losing their reelection bids, and a GOP sweep in the House seemed likely.
The story turned in June after the Supreme Court released its decision reversing Roe v. Wade, ending the federal right for a woman to have an abortion and instead leaving it up to the states to decide.
The ruling galvanized millions of voters and became a core issue Democrats rallied around. Adding to the blue momentum was a decrease in gas prices and legislative wins on climate change and healthcare. Biden’s approval rating also started to rise slowly.
Since then, the pendulum has shifted again in the GOP’s favor, Jessica Taylor, an analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said. Taylor added that the “sugar high Democrats were on before Labor Day has dissipated” and that “the calmer winds that Democrats thought might improbably save them back in August and early September have switched course.”
“While summer decisions to reverse Roe v. Wade and legislative successes for Democrats have helped motivate their once-dormant voting base, the economic news that had gotten better a few months ago has now swung back to helping Republicans,” she said. “Given inflation and rising gas prices, and simple historical trends that long predicted trouble for Democrats, the snap isn’t surprising, and it is one we previously wrote would not be unusual. Given those increasing indicators, including shifts toward Republicans on the generic ballot, this is still an unpredictable environment that could produce a slightly out-of-the-norm result.”
A recent New York Times-Siena College poll found that Republicans have a “narrow but distinct advantage” as concerns about inflation and pain at the pump continue to affect voters.
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The poll found that 49% of likely voters said they planned to send Republicans to Congress, compared with 45% who planned to vote for Democrats. The survey’s results showed a slight bump for the GOP since a similar poll was taken in September that had Democrats with a 1-point lead among likely voters. The poll also showed that Republicans opened up a 10-percentage-point lead among independent voters, compared with a 3-point edge for Democrats in September.
That’s good news for candidates such as Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Georgia senatorial hopeful Herschel Walker. Both men have hammered their opponents on crime and have tied them to Biden’s policies as often as they can.
In Johnson’s race, it seemed that Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes had a decent shot of taking down the two-term conservative senator. In two months, that cautious optimism has dissipated.
“People are just hitting their heads against the wall,” Tom Nelson, a local county executive from central Wisconsin and onetime Democratic candidate, told CNN. “How do we let this happen?”
Barnes’s lead against Johnson collapsed last month after the GOP blanketed the airwaves with negative ads against Barnes attacking him on the issue of crime.
An August Marquette Law School poll of likely voters showed Barnes leading Johnson 52% to 45%, but by the beginning of this month, those numbers had reversed.
In Pennsylvania, an InsiderAdvantage-FOX 29 poll showed Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Trump-endorsed candidate, gaining ground on Democratic nominee John Fetterman. The poll of 550 likely voters had the men in a statistical dead heat, both polling 46%, with 5% undecided. Libertarian candidate Erik Gerhardt had about 2% of the vote. Fetterman’s shrinking lead has been attributed to independent voters breaking for Oz, InsiderAdvantage Chairman Matt Towery said.
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Like Wisconsin, Republicans have slammed Fetterman in recent weeks as being soft on crime.
