In new CBS polling available now, Democrats are seeing positive signs for their prospects in this year’s midterm elections.
Democrats lead Republicans by 13 percentage points among white women with college degrees after only leading by six percent in the group in July. “In the last two elections, White women with college degrees were critical to Democrats’ winning coalition, voting for them by double-digit margins,” CBS notes. Concerns about reproductive rights are a significant factor behind Democratic voters’ choices, according to CBS polling. Among Democratic likely voters, 77 percent called abortion “very important” in their vote for Congress. Concerns about protecting abortion are driving voters more than desires for restricting it, according to the numbers. Among likely voters, 41 percent indicated their vote for Congress this year rested on a desire to support abortion rights. Only 16 percent said the opposite, and 43 percent identified no connection between their votes and abortion access.
Among total respondents, Republicans saw a two-percentage point lead on the question of which party’s Congressional candidates that poll participants would back this fall. Republicans nabbed 47 percent of the support, and Democrats had 45 percent. In overall calculations for how many seats each party is forecasted to win, Republicans slightly led — but their lead was within the reported margin of error. CBS’s latest estimates for the total number of seats in the House each party will hold after the midterms puts the Republican total at 226, with the Democratic total at 209. The margin of error is 13 seats, and bringing down the GOP total by that level to account for possible alternate outcomes puts the party several seats below the number needed for control. Based on polling alone, FiveThirtyEight estimated Dems had a 35-in-100 chance of retaining control of the House after the midterms as of this Sunday. Dem prospects are considered significantly better in the Senate.
Other recent polling asking voters for their choice of a Democratic or Republican candidate in this year’s Congressional elections found Democrats in the lead. The level of public approval for Joe Biden’s job performance is also rising in recent polls amid developments like falling gas prices, easing inflation, and the enactment of legislative successes for the Democrats like the Inflation Reduction Act. The bill, which Biden recently signed into law, contains the biggest single investment by the U.S. government into fighting climate change in history. In the new CBS polling, a full 45 percent of overall respondents said they approved of Biden’s job performance, which is three percent higher than Biden’s approval level CBS found in July. The overall level of job approval for Biden is the highest seen in CBS polling since February.
