It doesn’t look like either party is outright winning the messaging war, but it’s pretty clear which party is losing it.
While Democrats continue fretting about abortion and nothing else, voters seem to be tuned into other issues like crime and immigration. With the southern border merely a suggestion under the Biden administration, Americans are wondering why there’s a total lack of focus on practical issues. It’s all right there in black and white, people are concerned about crime, immigration, and the economy. Pick your order, it varies by poll, but the top three or four concerns are almost always the same.
Where are Democrats on these issues? Leading from behind, it would seem, according to the latest polling data from Reuters/Ipsos:
Forty percent of registered voters said Republicans were the party best suited to address immigration, compared to 32% who picked Democrats.
For solving crime, 39% picked Republicans and 30% picked Democrats. The rest said they didn’t know – or picked another party or independents.
While high rates of inflation remain the top concern for U.S. voters, crime and immigration are seen as important themes for motivating core Republican voters to turn out and vote – and for picking up votes from independents and moderate Democrats.
Overall, 30% of registered voters in the poll said their top concern was inflation, with 5% choosing immigration and 4% choosing crime.
If those are the issues care about, why have Democrats spent months ignoring them? That’s a rhetorical question, Democrats have never had an interest in border security or, um, prosecuting criminals. The two go hand in hand. Law-breakers are better protected in most major Democrat-run cities than law-abiding citizens. Add the lack of public safety to the crippled economy and it’s quite clear that the people currently in charge don’t seem to give a rat’s a** about kitchen table issues.
The above data dovetails nicely with more polling from Reuters, this time covering Biden’s approval rating. It’s down again as voters watch empty promises come and go while the economy languishes amid a recession:
President Joe Biden’s public approval rating edged lower this week and was close to the lowest level of his presidency, with just five weeks to go before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday found.
The two-day national poll found that 40% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance, down from 41% a week earlier.
The president’s sagging popularity, which drifted as low as 36% in May and June, has helped drive expectations that his Democratic Party will lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November, and possibly the Senate as well.
Oops! That’s the wrong way on the escalator. For a brief two seconds back in August, Biden was on the upward trend. It seemed for a moment Democrats could suddenly do no wrong while voters vacationed and journalists needed to fill content during a politically boring summer month. After Labor Day, the ship returned to earth and voters started paying closer attention.
If Biden’s approval is slipping again and Republicans are favored on most issues, Democrats stand a good chance of losing the Senate. The House is likely already gone, there’s no way Dems avoid a wipeout in these political winds.
The Senate is the thing to watch and if crime, immigration, and the economy stay as the centerpieces, and Democrats keep ignoring them, Republicans may be in for a good election night.
