After months of facing a potential blue wave of losses in the 2018 midterms, the Republican Party has taken the lead in a generic congressional poll, according to Morning Consult. In this same poll, President Trump’s job approval rating has also jumped.
Currently, the GOP enjoys a +1 point lead on the generic poll. A full 39 percent say they would choose a Republican over a Democrat in their respective district, while 38 percent said the same about the Democrat. Only 23 percent remain undecided.
In the past, on this same poll, Democrats have enjoyed leads ranging from two to ten points.
While this is the first poll in a long time giving the GOP an advantage, it is in keeping with the overall trend in other polls that have moved towards Republicans. One month ago, Democrats enjoyed a double digit lead. That has now shrunk to less than seven points.
There is also positive news for Trump, who now enjoys a 47 percent job approval rating. The same number, 47 percent, disapprove. This is especially good because this is the rare poll that does not have the president’s disapproval above 50 percent or underwater. He is even-steven at 47-47.
Even the far-left polling outfit PPP has Trump at 44 percent approve, 50 disapprove — a noticeable improvement. They do, though, show Democrats with an eight point lead on the congressional generic ballot.
Helping congressional Republicans is the fact that voters trust them more on key issues such as creating jobs (+9) and immigration (+6). The GOP also has a stunning +19 point lead on the issue of national security. Even on the issue of health care, where Democrats usually swamp Republicans, that lead has shrunk to just four points.
Congressional leaders Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) might also help to explain the Republican surge. Ryan’s favorable/unfavorable rating is only underwater four points, 36-40 percent; Pelosi is underwater 21 points, 28-49 percent.
President Trump is undoubtedly benefiting from the all the good economic news and the extra money voters are now seeing in their own pay checks from the recent tax cut. Trump has also been focused on the most popular parts of immigration reform, what he calls the four pillars: legalizing the so-called Dreamers, ending chain migration and the visa lottery, and building a border wall. Democrats are widely seen as obstructionists on this issue, as the party that shut down the government in response to a reasonable and popular compromise.
Also, the Russia probe is finally collapsing under the weight of all the media’s lies and new revelations about the unethical behavior of the FBI — not to mention the fact that Hillary Clinton and the Democrat National Committee have been exposed as being behind the phony Russian dossier.
On top of that, while the disgraced American media has been obsessed with overturning Trump’s election using shrill nonsense that declares everything Watergate and the end of democracy, the public is obviously growing tired of all this fake news. After more than a year of this propaganda and not a shred of evidence pointing to any wrongdoing committed by Trump or his campaign, other than rabid left-wing partisans, voters are tuning out the media’s hysterical white noise and looking instead at the actual job Trump is doing — and more and more of them obviously like what they see.
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