In recent months, new numbers reveal Democrats surged by 7 percentage points against Republicans in generic ballot polling from Fox News. The polling asked respondents which party’s candidate they’d support in the upcoming Congressional elections without specifying a candidate by name.
In polling conducted from the end of last week into the beginning of this one, ending on August 9, support for Democrats and Republicans was evenly split. Each side got 41 percent in the generic ballot polling from Fox News, which was conducted by a jointly operating team of Republican and Democratic pollsters. In polling from Fox back in May, Republicans were ahead of Democrats by 7 percent, with 46 percent of the support compared to just 39 percent for Dems. By last month, the GOP lead was just three percentage points.
Recently, Democratic leaders in Congress and at the White House scored a significant series of victories, including the Inflation Reduction Act — as it’s known — that recently passed the Senate. That legislation was in the form of a budget reconciliation deal, meaning it didn’t need a single Republican vote since Dems hold a simple majority in the chamber. It was the culmination of months and months of negotiations and infighting among members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. Now, the legislation includes landmark provisions like the largest single investment by the U.S. government in fighting climate change ever and the allowance for Medicare to negotiate the cost of certain prescription drugs, although that new policy won’t go into effect right away.
The investments in combating environmental degradation include huge sums for tax credits supporting electric vehicles and the usage of renewable energy sources in the production of electricity. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders also well-established in the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning Roe they’d fight for the restoration of federal abortion protections, providing an opportunity for Americans to hope.
As Chris Anderson, a Democratic pollster behind the Fox polling, put it: “Between passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, killing al Qaeda’s leader, less pain at the pump, and the Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices taking away abortion rights, the political landscape is less horrible for Democrats… There are successes Democrats can point to that didn’t exist in the spring, but the biggest single change I see in this poll is the increased disapproval of the Supreme Court and suspect that is a significant factor.” Since May, a large swing in women’s anticipated support in upcoming Congressional elections was recorded: in Fox’s May polling, the hypothetical Republican Congressional candidate led among women by 1 percent, but now, the Democratic contender leads in the same group by 6 percent. After Roe was overturned, a wide variety of legal challenges to try and stop state-level abortion restrictions promptly got moving.
