Maybe the Democrats aren't doomed in November
from the Washington Post. No pay link below.
By Perry Bacon Jr.
Columnist
July 1, 2022 at 4:58 p.m. EDT
snip:
To be sure, polls this far out from an election aren’t very predictive. Nevertheless, there is a real chance Democrats will far outperform Biden’s approval rating, and perhaps even keep control of the House and Senate and win key gubernatorial races in November.
Why? First, many of the people who say they disapprove of Biden also don’t like Republicans and are almost certain to vote Democratic, if they vote at all. Biden’s approval rating has declined by 12 percentage points since the start of his term, according to tracking by the Economist. If those breaking with the president were all moderates and swing voters, Democrats would be in deep trouble. But some of Biden’s approval decline is due to Black voters (-17), voters under age 30 (-18), Democrats (-12), liberals (-15) and other left-leaning parts of the electorate growing sour on the president. The overwhelming majority of those people aren’t voting Republican. For example, a recent Post-Ipsos poll of Black adults found that 70 percent approved of Biden’s performance, compared with 28 percent who disapproved. But 88 percent of Black adults indicated they would vote for congressional Democrats this fall, compared with only 9 percent support for Republicans.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that only 26 percent of Georgia voters ages 18-34 approved of Biden, but 61 percent of people in that age group said they were backing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Democrats don’t have to convince these voters that Biden is doing a great job — they only need to convince them that the party overall has done enough and that putting Republicans in charge will make things worse. That’s not a hard case to make. Ideally, in the months before the election, Democrats take actions that would excite people who are deciding between voting Democratic and not voting at all, such as forgiving student loans and adopting whatever climate change proposal can get 50 votes in the Senate. The details emerging from the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and former president Donald Trump’s continued presence in American politics will help Democrats in making the case to sporadic voters that the 2022 election is as important as the ones in 2018 and 2020. In those two elections, young people, Black voters and other left-leaning groups voted at very high rates, helping boost Democrats.
snip
The poll figures he quotes in relation to the bf'd line in paragraph 2 were undoubtedly taken before Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in. Even though she is new to the court, let's hope she can gain some visibility, which might help matters.
No pay link: https://wapo.st/3ODy3Ln
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/maybe-democrats-not-doomed-in-november/
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