The 10-percent lead previously held by Republicans in polling that asks respondents whether they’d vote for the Democrat or Republican on their Congressional ballot in upcoming elections has now completely vanished. The polling in which this lead has disappeared is the version of it that’s conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News, and it was last fall when Republicans had that 10-percent lead — less than a year into Biden’s presidency, Americans (some of them at least) had evidently turned towards Republicans. But that lead is gone: after a seven-percent lead for Republicans getting recorded in February, Democrats are one percent ahead of Republicans in a new edition of this polling. A full 46 percent backed Democrats, while 45 percent picked the Republican.
First Lady Jill Biden is headed to Romania and Slovakia this week to meet with U.S. service members and Ukrainians "who have been forced to flee their home country because of Putin’s war," her office says.
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) May 2, 2022
According to The Washington Post, “Nearly all of the change since February is the result of a shift toward the Democrats among self-identified independents, a group that can be volatile in public opinion polls.” In the new polling, independent registered voters were evenly divided — with 42 percent backing the hypothetical Democratic candidate and 42 percent picking the Republican. Among voters aged 18 to 39, Democrats have a 12-percent lead — although in February, support was roughly evenly split between the two major parties in this group. Meanwhile, there’s also been improvement in the overall level of approval for Biden’s job performance. In February, that approval stood at 37 percent in Post-ABC polling, but now, it’s at 42 percent — while not a seismic shift, it’s enough to make clear that Republicans haven’t by any means provided the sort of salvation for Americans they’ve been aiming to present. Read more at this link.
President Biden got a readout yesterday from House Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the delegation that met with President Zelensky in Kyiv. Schiff says there were "a lot of things that we discussed that I had not heard before in terms of needs that Ukraine has."
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) May 2, 2022
Control of both houses of Congress will be at stake in this year’s midterm elections. Redistricting stands to have an outsized impact on how those elections turn out — in Florida, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis approved an aggressively pro-Republican map that seems poised to give the GOP 20 of the state’s 28 U.S. House seats, which works out to more than 71 percent of the total, although Trump won there with a little over 51 percent of the vote in 2020. In other words, the map doesn’t accurately reflect the overall political distribution of the state. The map also undercuts representation of Black Floridians and other marginalized groups — areas from a northern district currently represented by Al Lawson, who is Black, end up in four different districts under the new map. Predictably, there have already been legal challenges to the new lines, with a lawsuit recently filed on behalf of Black Voters Matter, the Equal Ground Education Fund, the League of Women Voters of Florida, Florida Rising Together, and individual Florida voters. That new case alleges that the new Congressional district map violates the Florida Constitution.
Breaking overnight: First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Romania and Slovakia from May 5-9. One of her stops will put her within miles of the Ukrainian border.
On Mother's Day, she'll meet with Ukrainian mothers and children who've been forced to flee their home country.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 2, 2022
