Over the weekend, Donald Trump held a sedition rally in Nevada in which he exalted the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as “the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen." In the wake of Trump’s appearance in the Silver State, Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto promptly notched her two best online fundraising days of the 2022 cycle, hauling in more than $1 million.
Sen. Cortez Masto is one of Senate Democrats’ most endangered incumbents up for reelection this November, and Trump’s presence in the state clearly benefitted her war chest.
But as Trump’s standing among independent voters continues to plummet, the more he inserts himself into the 2022 midterms, the more Democratic candidates stand to benefit at the voting booth.
When we checked in two weeks ago on Trump’s favorability rating in Civiqs tracking, he was 13 points underwater with independent men—a drop that was precipitated by the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Since then, Trump’s fall in standing among independent men has continued, putting him at a 20-point deficit as of Oct. 10, or 35% favorable vs. 55% unfavorable.
Trump’s downward trend among independent women since the FBI search is similarly tumultuous, leaving him 30 points underwater with the voting bloc, or 31% favorable - 61% unfavorable.
All of that puts Trump at his lowest favorability rating among all registered voters since just before the 2016 election: 37%.
It’s unclear whether Trump’s increasing toxicity among independents will stick to the greater Republican Party in a midterm when he technically isn’t on the ballot. But Trump’s paw prints are all over the midterm election, and the more he reminds voters of the fact that the GOP is still his party and no one else’s, the better.
So, indeed, the more Trump, the better.
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Yes, the polls still matter! On The Downballot, The Economist's G. Elliott Morris joins us to discuss his new book on polling, Strength in Numbers, including the early history of polling in the form of 19th-century straw polls; how we can be smart consumers of polls by placing their uncertainty in context; and the surprises that have stood out in his new model forecasting the 2022 midterms.