National Poll Has Really Bad News for Democrats

With the midterms closing in, a new poll from the New York Times and Sienna College delivers troubling news for Democrats: Worries about the economy are giving Republicans a renewed edge. The big takeaway stat is that likely voters would prefer a Republican to represent them in Congress over a Democrat by a 49-45 margin, a flip from September when Democrats (boosted by concerns over abortion rights) were up by a single point. The stats with independent voters explain the turnaround:

• Big flip: Independents say they favor a GOP candidate by a margin of 51-41. But in September, Democrats had a 3-point lead.
• Huge flip: Nowhere is the shift more pronounced than among independent women voters. They now favor Republicans by 18 points, but they favored Democrats by 14 in September. The Times, in what may be an understatement, calls this 32-point shift "striking." The story includes a quote from one such woman who says that while she disagrees with the Supreme Court's Roe decision "1,000 percent," it's not enough to sway her vote.
• One view: So what's going on here? "Americans don’t like their Democratic president, and they aren’t happy with the status quo," writes Charles C.W. Cooke at the conservative National Review. "And what respondents care about—despite all that talk of 'Roevember'—is the bad economy."
• Another poll: A CBS News-YouGov poll also finds that Democratic momentum after the Roe decision has "stalled." It finds that the "Republicans' House lead has stabilized today at 224 seats to the Democrats' 211," after shrinking in the previous two monthly polls.

(More midterm elections stories.)