2018 midterm polls a referendum — Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — While he is not on the ballot, US President Donald Trump has acknowledged that the 2018 midterms, above all, represent a referendum on his presidency.
Should Democrats win control of the House, as strategists in both parties suggest is likely, they could derail Trump’s legislative agenda for the next two years. Perhaps more importantly, they would also win subpoena power to investigate the president’s many personal and professional missteps.
Today, all 435 seats in the US House are up for re-election and 35 Senate seats are in play as well as almost 40 governorships and the balance of power in virtually every state legislature.
“I don’t think there’s a Democrat in this country that doesn’t have a little angst left over from 2016 deep down,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, which spent more than ever before — nearly $60 million in all — to support Democratic women this campaign season.
“Everything matters and everything’s at stake,” Schriock said.
Voters will decide on the $5 billion debate between President Donald Trump’s take-no-prisoner politics and the Democratic Party’s super-charged campaign to end the GOP’s monopoly in Washington and statehouses across the nation.
There are indications that an oft-discussed “blue wave” may help Democrats seize control of at least one chamber of Congress. But two years after an election that proved polls and prognosticators wrong, nothing is certain on the eve of the first nationwide elections of the Trump presidency.
Today’s elections will also test the strength of a Trump-era political realignment defined by evolving divisions among voters by race, gender and especially education.
Trump’s Republican coalition is increasingly becoming older, whiter, more male and less likely to have a college degree. Democrats are relying more upon women, people of color, young people and college graduates.
Just five years ago, the Republican National Committee reported that the GOP’s very survival depended upon attracting more minorities and women. Those voters have increasingly fled Trump’s Republican Party, turned off by his chaotic leadership style and xenophobic rhetoric.
Blue-collar men, however, have embraced the unconventional president.
A nationwide poll released Sunday by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal details the depth of the demographic shifts.
Democrats led with likely African-American voters (84 percent to eight percent), Latinos (57 percent to 29 percent), voters between the ages of 18-34 (57 percent to 34 percent), women (55 percent to 37 percent) and independents (35 percent to 23 percent).