As both parties gear up for the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans continue to dominate poll after poll. Democrats are running out of angles to run on, and a new Gallup poll is giving them even fewer options.
Gallup found that respondents believe the GOP can better protect the United States from international threats than the Democratic Party by a margin of 54%-39%. The GOP typically leads in this polling metric, but it increased its margin from last year’s 50%-46% lead. It’s the biggest gap in the party’s favor on this question since 2015, likely thanks to President Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal (with Americans still trapped in the Taliban-controlled country).
More notably, the GOP also leads on the question of which party can keep the country prosperous by a margin of 50%-41%. That’s the GOP’s largest lead since 2014. Democrats led on this question last year 48%-47%.
And then there is the gut punch. Democrats historically have held a polling lead on the question of which party can handle the country’s most important problem. It’s an open-ended question, with problems varying from voter to voter. But the GOP leads it for the first time since 2015 by a margin of 41%-38%. Democrats led that question last year 47%-39%.
Democrats are running out of ways to downplay their unpredictability. The best they were able to muster was briefly arguing that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom surviving a recall election in deep-blue California was a sign of things to come. Now, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe is telling his staff that they have to power through Biden’s unpopularity in order to win in Virginia next month.
With Biden’s record so far littered with failures and his spending plan up in the air because he can’t even get his own party on board, it isn’t clear what exactly Democrats will even have to run on 13 months from now. Republicans gave them a unified government in the Georgia runoffs, but thankfully it looks like the GOP won’t try to defeat itself next year. Two years of unified Democratic government is two too many, but it appears that that brief disaster will be corrected soon.
