Midterm elections historically favor the White House's opposition party — the House majority has flipped in every midterm since 2002 — but if President Donald Trump wants to do the improbable there, he will have to gin up GOP voter enthusiasm.
A new CNN poll has found Democrats are more motivated than Republicans for the midterms, understandable considering those coming off the November loss have the axe to grind, but there remains a negativity within the Democrat base that Republicans could capitalize on.
Democrats have a 22-point edge over Republicans on midterm voter enthusiasm, but just 28% of Americans have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, the lowest in the history of CNN's polling dating back to 2022, according to the poll conducted by SSRS.
Republican and Republican-leaning voters are 5 points better in favorability views of their own party versus Democrat and Democrat-leaning voters.
Also, Democrats have a bit of an issue still simmering with younger voters — something Trump had effectively chipped away from their base in the past presidential election. Democrat voters under 45 favor reelecting most Democrats in Congress by just 4 points, while older Democrat voters are more locked in with a 52-point margin favoring reelecting most Democrats.
"Democrats themselves are 7 points less likely than Republicans to believe members of Congress of their own party deserve reelection," according to CNN's poll analysis. "Those historic lows on favorability are partly driven by Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents being less likely to have a favorable view of their own side (76% of Republican-aligned adults have a favorable view of the GOP, while just 58% on the Democratic side feel that way about their party)."
Another poll provided to Newsmax earlier this week found Republicans do trail Democrats in the generic battleground districts ballot, but that 3-point edge for Democrats is a statistical tie because it is within the poll's margin of error. That alone is a telling suggestion that Republicans might have some residual Trump 2024 momentum to carry into the midterms.
SSRS conducted the July 10-13 poll among 1,057 U.S. adults, and the results have a margin of error of ±3.5 percentage points.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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