If it’s Monday, President Biden will present his fiscal year 2023 budget. The White House and Democrats clarify Biden’s remark to Putin that “this man cannot remain in power.” According to a new poll, Biden’s approval rating has dropped to 40%. Trump campaigned for David Perdue in the Georgia governor’s race, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., announced his resignation from Congress following his conviction. And there was the slap that was seen all over the world.
Despite all of the other rough numbers in the poll for Biden and the party, the generic-ballot result doesn’t appear to be that bad for Democrats at first glance.
Republicans have a 2-point advantage among registered voters, with 46 percent preferring a Republican-controlled Congress to 44 percent preferring a Democratic-controlled Congress, which is well within the margin of error for the poll. However, the R+2 result does not tell the whole story of the midterms.
To begin with, the R+2 result is the GOP’s highest congressional preference score in our poll since 2014.
And you recall what happened during the 2014 midterm elections.
Republicans have a double-digit lead among independents; Republicans have a larger lead among men than Democrats have among women; and white voters have gone from R+5 in 2018 to R+17 now.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the poll finds that Republicans have a 17-point enthusiasm advantage over Democrats, with 67 percent of Republicans indicating a high level of interest in the midterm elections (either a “9” or “10” on a 10-point scale), compared to 50 percent of Democrats.
Since 2006, the party with a double-digit — or close to it — enthusiasm advantage in our poll has made significant midterm gains.
Remember that in a midterm election, when turnout is much lower than in a presidential election, enthusiasm matters more.
That’s the percentage of Americans who support Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination, according to a recent national poll, while 17 percent oppose it. Since 2005, no Supreme Court nominee has received a higher net support rating.
Jackson, on the other hand, is less well-known than some of the other recent Supreme Court nominees. The majority of those polled — 56 percent — had never heard of her or were unsure how to rate her. Except for now-Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2016 but was not confirmed (and didn’t even get a hearing from the Republican-controlled Senate), Jackson had the lowest name recognition rate of all recent Supreme Court nominees since 2005.
Former President Donald Trump visited Georgia over the weekend to rally support for his preferred candidates, including former Senator David Perdue, who is challenging Republican Governor Brian Kemp, and Senate hopeful Herschel Walker.
The gubernatorial race is a litmus test for Trump’s ability to sway Republican voters, but Perdue continues to trail Kemp in recent polls.
Perdue, for one, is endorsing Trump’s claims about the 2020 election, telling the crowd on Saturday night that “our elections in 2020 in Georgia were absolutely stolen.” Former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel has released a new ad accusing investment banker Mike Gibbons of downplaying his military service during a candidate forum altercation. The two are the frontrunners for the Republican Senate nomination.
“Mike Gibbons has the nerve to say military service doesn’t count,” a Gold Star mother says in the commercial before going on to talk about her son’s service in the US Marines.
Gibbons emphasized his son’s military service in a video response to the ad posted to Twitter, accusing Mandel of going “too far” with the ad. He went on to say that he only mentioned Mandel’s lack of experience in the private sector at the forum. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine says he’s willing to consider neutrality in talks to end the war with Russia as soon as possible.
Utah lawmakers overrode the governor’s veto of a bill prohibiting transgender students from participating in girls’ sports.
Former President Trump and his two sons have agreed to testify in a lawsuit brought by investors who claim they were duped into making bad investments.
