CNBC Poll: Republicans Lead by Ten Points for Control of Congress

First, Brandon's numbers are bad:

President Joe Biden's overall approval rating stabilized at a low level of 41%, according to the CNBC All-America Survey.

Biden's approval rating on handling the economy and dealing with the coronavirus both declined.

At 46% approval to 48% disapproval, Biden’s approval rating on the coronavirus is now underwater for the first time.

His economic approval sank more deeply underwater, with 37% approving compared to 56% who disapprove

"The Covid (approval) number is actually I think the more important one," said Micah Roberts, partner at Public Opinion Strategies, the Republican pollster for the survey "As goes COVID, so goes the Biden presidency, and that’s really proving to be quite true."

The nasty senile r@pist demagogued the virus and and took advantage of the virus that his Chinese Business Partners created to take out his Chinese Business Partners' enemy:

The nasty senile r@pist has walked back his former bluster about "shutting down" the virus, and now speaks only of "beating it back."

"We gotta beat it back before we shut it down. Look, this is gonna take time worldwide. In order to beat COVID, we need to shut it down worldwide," Biden replied when asked if he still intended to "shut down" the virus during a Dec. 3 press conference.

Back to the poll:

Can it get worse?

Indeed it can.

The approval rating among those who voted for him has dropped from 80% to 69% in the April survey. There have been notable declines among Americans 18-34 and suburban residents, both of whom, in dramatic swings, now register net negative views on the president.

As bad as Biden's number may be, the polling data for Democrats in Congress is far worse.

Republicans now sport a historic 10-point advantage when Americans are asked which party they prefer to control Congress, holding a 44%-34% margin over Democrats. That's up from a 2-point Republican advantage in the October survey.

In the past 20 years, CNBC and NBC surveys have never registered a double-digit Republican advantage on congressional preference, with the largest lead ever being 4 points for the GOP.

"If the election were tomorrow, it would be an absolute unmitigated disaster for the Democrats," said Jay Campbell, partner at Hart Research Associates and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

There's an interesting thing that happens with highly gerrymandered seats.

The point of gerrymandering is to spread your voters out so that you don't have as few very safe districts as possible.

You don't want too many very safe districts, because it's better for you to spread your voters out and have more districts which are safe, and fewer districts which are very safe.

You spread your armies over more territory -- but thinner in ranks.

You hold more territory. But you are less able to withstand an enemy surge.

The point of this is that highly gerrymandered seats are designed to withstand a bad year but not a very bad year. It's like a dam that was built on the cheap -- tall enough to contain the waters of an above average storm, but not a big storm.

A big storm will wash the dam away.

And a once-in-a-generation storm? Forget about it. The dam was never even contemplated to be able to withstand such a storm.

Republicans should start recruiting candidates for D+5 to D+10 "safe" seats -- they might wind up picking up a good number of those for which they can recruit decent candidates.

posted by Ace at 01:25 PM

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