What's Trending, Less Than a Month Before the Midterms?

 538 Polls October 11 Showing Biden Job Approval Within One Point of Disapproval

For reference, in the link above, there are three polls from YouGov/The Economist which are worthy of note.  All three were taken from October 8-11, so they are the most recent.  They have a B rating, which isn't great, but which is equal to the other two polls on the same subject from Rasmussen and Ipsos, which put factors in place that make the data skew to the right.  The poll of 1,030 "likely voters" has President Biden's job approval rating at 48%, a 5 point jump from the last similar poll, and disapproval at 51%.  The poll of 1,330 registered voters has approval at 48% and disapproval at 49%, and the poll of 1,500 adults has approval at 45% and disapproval at 46%.  

That's a 10% to as much as 12% swing from similar polls in mid-September, what some pollsters call "trending."  I'm not a pollster, but I'd call it that.  I'm not sure of the factoring they do on job approval ratings, but that much of a shift should generate some interest in finding out what it is that has caused this.  The President made a major campaign speech in Philadelphia, which blasted the GOP for its extremism and which silenced a lot of the whispering and speculation about his mental sharpness.  He's actually been out a lot more, because candidates seem to want him to appear with them on stage.  It's pretty obvious, at least to those who aren't politically biased toward the right, that he's actively engaged in trying all of the steps economists say are necessary to curb inflation.  Combined with the shock of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the revelations that Trump took top secret documents to Mar-a-Lago and there are some reasons to support the trend.  

And, reasons to be optimistic about the mid-terms. 

Further down the page is the results of the generic ballot poll.  That's been trending, too.  Last spring, Republicans had a seven point advantage and there was lots of talk about the party in power always losing the mid-terms, blah, blah, blah.  But the Democrats now lead in all of those generic polls, by as much as 4 points, and by an average of just over 3, which is a 10 point swing.  

Herschel Walker:  A Poster Child for GOP Extremism

Herschel Walker isn't just turning off Georgia voters.  He's becoming a poster child for GOP extremism.  Not only is this guy pathetic when it comes to the ability to put words together and form a coherent, intelligible sentence, but his see-through lies and denials just make it so much worse.  It's not going to move political die hards, of course, but in a state like Georgia, where the Republicans need independents to win elections, this is not playing well.  But it also underlines the fact that there are other extremists running on the GOP ticket elsewhere, and it's not helping those candidates, either. 

Ultimately, I think a combination of Walker, Trump and his boxes of documents, and the last public January 6th hearing will be the demise of any chance the Republicans might once have had to take control of at least one house of Congress.  All of this has a long term effect when it comes to trending, because it takes people a little while to absorb the information, evaluate it and respond to it.  Election day looks like it will come at the exact time when the negative vibes are peaking and people will be in a mood to vote the extremists out. 

Trump Raising Money for Democratic Senate Candidates

Oh, I knew that headline would get your attention.  Trump has been holding rallies, of course, it's his full time job to put his pinched lips behind a microphone and blow hard for hours.  After years of this, people have learned to not show up.  Attendance hasn't been filling even small venues.  And after he visited Nevada, the Democratic Senator, who is running for re-election, Catherine Cortez-Masto, raised over a million campaign dollars in just two days.  She appears to be locked in a dead heat, according to the polls, but Nevada has seen what many states have seen since the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court, and that is long lines of young women registering to vote.  That's never good news for the GOP, especially in a state like Nevada. 

Trump's rally in Arizona, which was also not well attended, had the same effect there for both Katie Hobbs, Democratic candidate for Governor, and Mark Kelly, running for re-election to his senate seat.  A mountain of small contributions flooded into the Arizona Democratic Party, which has also been boosted by a wave of new voter registrations.  And while it is another issue that bears discussing, the fact that so many unregistered voters are lining up to promise to cast a ballot is another one of those "trends" we've been talking about.  

Nothing Surprises Me Any More

Midterm elections are won by turnout.  That's true of most elections, but it is particularly true of the midterms.  That's how Doug Jones won a partial term in the senate from Alabama.  It's also how Republicans won control of Congress and state legislatures in 2010 and gerrymandered their way into close competition.  It will take a while to undo all of that, but Democrats have the best chance at winning a midterm election as the party in power as they ever have had.  

I'm pretty optimistic, looking at the trends.  The best news that we could have received was the surprise initiative in Kansas, and the fact that Mary Peltola, in Alaska, outpolled two once-popular Republicans to gain a house seat, and will likely be re-elected again in November.  The trends have been moving in the direction of the Democratic candidates virtually across the board.  The economy, which was once the big issue for over half of all voters is still big, but its dropped to below 45% while abortion rights, which were single digit, have morphed to almost 30%.  That's quite a trend and it indicates that turnout among pro-choice Democrats is likely to be high, and more than that, likely to be the decisive factor in this election.  

And Biden's job approval rating, while not great, has seen quite an improvement, a trend, if you will, while Trump's unfavorability is also showing a trend in a negative direction.  We have less than a month to go, plenty of time for Walker to be revealed as even more of a hypocrite than he already is, and for Trump to open mouth and insert foot again and again.  It's reliable, folks.  It will happen.  

Make sure you register and vote.