Aside from numbers which are still relatively favorable for Democrats up for re-election in 2022, including the "generic poll" which I personally don't really pay much attention to because the district boundaries don't reflect the national mood, one of the numbers that indicates election night might still be a pretty sweet moment for the Democratic party is that pollsters continue to run "favorability" numbers on the recent former President, and they are not good. The media likes to use negative terms to describe Biden's job approval, which has been slowly creeping back upward, but Trump's favorability has dropped like a stone in a well.
An AP-NORC poll, rated as a class A with 1,100 likely voters polled, showed Trump with a 63% unfavorability rating, and 34% favorable. The polling data was gathered between January 13-18 and has a + or - 5% margin of error. It mirrors previous polls in which Trump's favorability hovers in the low 30% range. That's a +29 unfavorable rating. But even the outlier Rassmussen shows Trump tanking fast.
I haven't seen a Trump response to what can only be called disastrous poll numbers for him that have materialized in January. Maybe he doesn't want to discredit polling data that has Biden's disapproval at +4 to +7, though several polls in January from YouGov, Morning Consult and an isolated Quinnipiac poll showed 50% job approval. But I am absolutely certain that he's seeing these numbers and he's stewing over them.
A Mid-Term Election Factor
People are still not paying a whole lot of attention to politics right now, so the numbers don't move very much. Biden's Atlanta speech, his January 19 press conference (which I thought was completely characteristic of exactly who Joe Biden is and his Presidency, which just completed one of the most successful and accomplished first years of any Presidency since Roosevelt's first term) don't seem to have moved the needle much. I can't imagine very many people actually stayed tune for the whole two hours of the press conference. It's too early for either of those events to hit any recent polling data. But Trump's fall directly correlates with the cataract of bad news about the full scope of his administration's attempt to subvert the Constitition, and overturn legitimate election results, disrupting the peaceful transfer of power.
He's already launches an effort to take revenge against Republicans who don't back the big lie by attempting to run his own endorsees and "primary" some resistant members of the GOP. That effort may knock some current Republicans out of their seats, but it will fail to deliver the GOP a majority in Congress. What it will do, especially if his unfavorable ratings stay where they are or get worse, is open the door for a lot of Democrats who didn't have a chance to win seats against established Republicans to take them away from unpopular Trumpies.
Democrats were already doing well in Arizona and Georgia, mainly because Republicans have failed to grasp the fact that population growth in both of those states over the past decade has tipped the political balance to the Democrats. The Democrats have solid statewide majorities in both states, having flipped all four of the Senate seats, and a total of three house seats during the Trump era. The only thing Trump's presence does in either state is motivate Democrats and Never-Trumper independents, to vote against anyone he endorses.
If you haven't connected the dots yet, this is the January 6th effect. High profile corruption and attempts to overturn votes in both states after the 2020 elecction deflated the GOP balloon and boosted Democrats. It handed both of Georgia's senate seats to the Democrats, and it doomed chances of state officials in Arizona, led by Senate President Karen Fann, to win re-election. Both states will have Democratic officials elected statewide in 2022, including Democratic governors and secretaries of state, and the Arizona legislature will be in the hands of the Democratic party for the first time in decades. That's a prediction, and I'll stand by that with confidence. You can see it shaping up in both places.
January 6th is a Gift That Keeps on Giving
Trump's "favorability," has fallen nine points in January as it becomes apparent that his role in the insurrection was that he was its leader. I never doubted that he was, based on his actions, his incessant harping about "massive voter fraud" even about his first election and his obstruction of justice and interference with investigations into his own efforts to commit voter fraud, uncovered and evidenced by the Mueller investigation. I sincerely hope that, now that the ball is rolling, all of that gets added to the charges against him, since he can no longer claim immunity.
Even without a legislative landmark over the coming year, it's going to be extremely difficult for Republicans to counter this. They've circled the wagons and they're huddled inside the circle in silence, but several of the wagons are on fire, and the flames are spreading, to use that analogy.
The Supreme Court, bless their hearts, finally did something decent in shutting down the last of Trump's ridiculous assertions and what was discovered in the National Archives is apparently a treasure trove of his documented criminal activity, committed against the people of the United States.
Random Stuff
Gretchen Whitmer comes in at better than 50% among Michigan voters, while J.D. Pritzker sits at 55-58% in Illinois polls. Stacy Abrams is the "apparent leader" in Georgia, no surprise there, and Democrat Katie Hobbs, who led the effort to protect Arizona's votes, has solid leads against all Republican challengers in Arizona, also at better than 50%.
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