President Donald Trump is freaking out about losing to former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls and Senate Republicans are panicking that Trump is bringing them down with him. Well, it turns out that they should be.
Trump and many of his Republican allies may dismiss public polling, but a recent round of such sampling has found that Democrats are poised to take back the Senate majority in a second consecutive blue wave similar to when they took back the House in 2018.
“Some recent Senate polls have been so eye-popping that we’re compelled to write about them — if only to sound a note of caution,” FiveThirtyEight elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich wrote in a column. “Those polls imply a Democratic wave of truly epic proportions.”
Indeed, the polls he speaks of include two showing former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper beating the hell out of Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) by at least 17 points. As you may recall, Gardner voted to acquit Trump in the rigged Senate impeachment trial, enraging voters across his state. And he was vulnerable even before he cast that vote.
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In Montana, Gov. Steve Bullock currently has a 7-point lead over Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) in a race that Trump himself has frequently blathered about on Twitter.
And Cal Cunningham is beating Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) — another Republican who voted to acquit Trump — by nine points.
Flipping these three seats would put Democrats in a very good position to take back the Senate, especially if they knock off Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ), both of whom voted to acquit Trump and are very unpopular.
This puts Republicans in a very difficult spot with the election on the horizon.
“The fact that they are even remotely plausible reflects a vulnerability for the GOP in the age of the coronavirus,” Rakich wrote. “Americans are souring on President Trump’s handling of the crisis, and congressional Republicans are reportedly worried that it will drag them down too. The pandemic has also devastated the economy, which has historically been bad news electorally for the party in the White House.”
And while Trump insists that the economy will improve dramatically and that the virus will “go away,” it doesn’t appear that will be the case. The unemployment rate is set to skyrocket above 20 percent in the weeks ahead, and re-opening the country this early is already triggering a second wave of the coronavirus that could be worse — before the first has even receded. And Republicans still refuse to stand up to Trump as he continues to respond recklessly and incompetently to the crisis.
The country is clearly ready for a change, but Rakich cautions that while this is good news for Democrats, the polls are just a snapshot.
“In the end, all these polls do is tell us something we should have already known: A second consecutive Democratic wave election is on the table,” he concluded. “But it’s not dinner time yet.”
Still, Republicans would be wise to take these polls seriously and do something to change their worsening political fortunes. Meanwhile, Americans should make sure this blue wave happens by voting.
Featured image via screen capture
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