Republican congressional candidates now hold their largest lead in midterm election vote preferences in a generation as President Joe Biden drifts to become the nowhere man of U.S. politics.
According to comparable ABC News/Washington Post polls dating back 40 years, Democrats hoping – or pleading – to retain their slim majorities in Congress next year face a huge challenge with voter discontent underlining their party’s approach to the economy and a president who is plumbing new depths of disapproval over his handling of just about everything.
When it comes to the simple metric of how American’s feel about the party with its man in the White House, there is a broad sense that the Democrats are out of touch with the concerns of most Americans — 62 percent say so, continuing a trend of growing disapproval that has been building since the summer.
ABC News reports while Biden’s policy initiatives like the infrastructure bill might be popular, he isn’t.
The survey numbers reveal 63 percent support for the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by Congress and 58 percent support for the now nearly $2 trillion social spending bill still under debate.
Biden gets little personal credit in this poll, which was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, while his unforced errors on a host of issues continue to define him as barely up to the job.
The White House / YouTubeBarely 31 percent say he’s keeping most of his major campaign promises, and 35 percent think he’s accomplished much overall.
And while most support his spending and policy plans, headwinds loom as 59 percent fear the president will over-reach and do too much to increase the size and role of government, up six points since spring.
If the midterm elections were today, 51 percent of registered voters say they’d support the Republican candidate in their congressional district, 41 percent say the Democrat.
That’s the biggest lead for Republicans in the 110 ABC/Post polls that have asked this question since November 1981.
It’s only the second time the GOP has held a statistically significant advantage (the other was +7 points in January 2002) and the ninth time it’s held any numerical edge at all, the ABC report concludes.
The poll, conducted between Nov. 7 and Nov. 10, surveyed 1,001 U.S. adults by phone. The margin of error is 3.5 percentage points.
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