President Donald Trump and his allies have confidently proclaimed that the Democrat-led impeachment proceedings against the president were setting up an electoral disaster for Democrats come November, but new poll numbers from Gallup tell an entirely different story. A solid majority of Americans — 59 percent, to be exact — say that they think their local member of Congress deserves re-election, which is one of the highest levels that Gallup has recorded in the past decade. Since at present, Democrats have a solid majority in the U.S. House, that number suggests that they’re well on their way to keeping it in November.
Gallup notes:
‘While most of the attention is being paid to this year’s presidential race, the success of the elected president’s initiatives next year will come down to whether Congress will support them — which largely depends on which party controls Congress… If Americans still feel their member deserves another term at a similar level closer to November, this could mean a favorable environment for Democrats’ prospects of maintaining power in at least one chamber of Congress.’
Most Americans (59%) say the U.S. representative in their local congressional district deserves to be reelected, and 35% say the same for most members of Congress. https://t.co/FN976hba89 pic.twitter.com/pmRX86E5JS
— GallupNews (@GallupNews) February 24, 2020
Both Republicans and Democrats seem to generally support their local member of Congress. A full 61 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said their Congressperson should be re-elected, while 60 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said the same.
Meanwhile, the 35 percent of respondents who said in this latest poll they think most members of Congress should be re-elected is also on the higher end of recent polling for that particular question, although the figure is on the lower end overall. The overall figure for this question is significantly dragged down by Republican respondents, who no doubt had Trump’s impeachment by the House in mind. Only 29 percent of Republicans said that they think most members of Congress should be re-elected, compared to a full 43 percent of Democrats — close to a majority! — who said the same.
Actual rates of re-election to the U.S. House are consistently pretty high. In 2018, the rate dipped — but even after the increased rate of incumbents leaving their office, the rate of re-election remained at a full 91 percent. In so-called generic ballot polling, which asks voters whether they’d vote for a Democrat or Republican for Congress this November, Democrats have led every single poll but one that RealClearPolitics has cataloged throughout the last year. In similar fashion to their lead prior to the 2018 blue wave, Democrats currently lead generic ballot polling by an average of 6.2 percent.
Over in the Senate in particular, Democrats would have to take four seats or three and the presidency to become a commanding majority presence. Currently, three GOP-held seats are rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report, and three more are rated as just “leaning” Republican, which is the last stop before toss-up status. Will these members of Congress get to support a Democratic president? It looks like it. In polling measuring a hypothetical general election match-up, Democratic presidential primary frontrunner Bernie Sanders beats Trump by an average of 4.4 percent nationally, and other leading Democrats tend to beat him by similar margins.
