The Campaign Update: New York Times Goes Into Shock Over Democrat Mid-Term Plight

“Democrats Shouldn’t Panic. They Should Go Into Shock.” That’s the headline of today’s weekly op/ed at the New York Times by Democrat activist Thomas B. Edsall.

It’s perfect.

Citing a new ABC/Washington Post poll, Edsall writes:

Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News, put it this way in an essay published on the network’s website:

As things stand, if the midterm elections were today, 51 percent of registered voters say they’d support the Republican candidate in their congressional district, 41 percent say the Democrat. That’s the biggest lead for Republicans in the 110 ABC/Post polls that have asked this question since November 1981.

These and other trends have provoked a deepening pessimism about Democratic prospects in 2022 and anxiety about the 2024 presidential election.

[End]

Now, the ABC/WaPo poll is worthless, an exercise in attempting to create news stories rather than to gauge actual public opinion, one of the most consistently inaccurate news media polls out there. But the most recent Trafalgar poll, published late last week, shows the GOP edge to be even bigger than that in the congressional preference measure, so Edsall is onto something, given that Trafalgar has been far and away the most accurate polling group in the country the last few election cycles.