Republicans may be unpopular headed into November’s midterm election, but Democrats have it even worse, putting at risk their chances of taking control of the Senate.
Warning signs have appeared for the Democratic Party in a variety of polling data.
Those polling numbers, when compared to other midterm elections when a Republican held the presidency and historical trends favored Democrats, are being seen as a big red warning headed into the fall.
CNN’s Harry Enten, in a recent analysis of polling data, found Democrats’ have a net favorability of five points. And that’s well below what their rating was in previous midterm elections when a Republican was in the White House: eight points in 2018 and 11 points in 2006.
“Democrats are – just simply put – running behind their previous benchmarks, and they’d need to be running well ahead of them if they want to take back the United States Senate,” he noted.
Republicans are defending narrow margins in the House and Senate in this year’s election amid President Trump’s underwater approval rating and a tough historical landscape.
The president’s job approval rating sits at a negative 15 points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. But the Democratic Party rating sits at a negative 20 points, the RCP polling average found.
While it’s common for the party holding the White House to lose seats in Congress in the midterm election, Democrats may not have the fire power to win complete control of Congress.
Just 28% of Americans view the Democratic Party positively, with 56% seeing Democrats in an unfavorable light, a CNN poll earlier this month found. Republicans’ approval was slightly higher at 32%.
Many election prognosticators favor Democrats to win control of the House where they only need to pick up three or four seats.
But the Senate is tougher. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority, meaning Democrats need to net four seats to control the chamber.
Not only do Democrats need to hold onto three seats where they are vulnerable – Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire – they would also need to flip seats in states Trump won by double digits in 2024.
But Enten’s forecast was bleak when it came to the Democrats’ chances for that kind of political pulloff.
“Let’s say Republicans only hold on to the states that Trump won by greater than 10 points,” he noted. “That would, in fact, give them the Senate 51 to 49.”
He found – while Democrats could flip North Carolina and flip Maine – the Republicans would hold Ohio, Texas and Alaska, keeping them in control of the upper chamber.
In the 2006 midterm election – when George W. Bush was president – Democrats rode a blue wave to win the Senate and the House, installing Nancy Pelosi as the first female speaker. In 2018 – in Trump’s first term – the Democrats only won the House, handing Pelosi back the speaker’s gavel.
But Pelosi is retiring from Congress this year, leaving Democrats without a high-profile leader. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries don’t have her national stature or fundraising prowess.
But Schumer and Jeffries are confident the party’s argument that they.can deliver economic affordability. to Americans, along with unhappiness about the war with Iran, will seem rise to power.
“Donald Trump is trying to nationalize the election because he knows that if there’s a free and fair election, he’s going to lose,” Jeffries recently told New York Magazine. “Republicans are going to get crushed, as we’ve been seeing all across the country.”
Trump, meanwhile, is going “all in” on the midterms, his top advisers told The Post earlier this year.
