The Best Numbers Since 2008, and Not One Point of Love
Democrats are up ten in party identification. Their own voters describe them in one word: weak.
A note from Lawrence
The good news: Democrats hold their widest party-identification lead in Gallup’s numbers since 2008, forty-nine to thirty-nine. The bad news: not one point of it is affection. The party is underwater on favorability, and when pollsters asked Democrats to describe their own party in their own words, the word that kept coming back was “weak.”
Voters aren’t choosing Democrats. They’re evacuating Republicans. I walk through what that means, why younger voters are drifting to independent, and what the party should actually do with a lead that’s on loan: show up, fund the races it has written off, and find a spine. Voters will hand Democrats a restraining order against the other guy, and those expire.
