It wasn't that long ago that we were all bracing for an all but certain Democratic shellacking, to borrow former President Obama's phrase, in this November's midterms, with even control of the solidly Democratic House of Representatives looking likely to fall into Republican hands.
Well, that was then and this is now, as the saying goes.
And the "now" in question is a midterm cycle in which Republicans overturned abortion rights and openly embraced fascism while Democratic President Joe Biden got to work passing historic legislation on everything from infrastructure to student loans.
And it seems voters have noticed. Because our "now" is also one in which even Fox News is spelling doom for Republicans in November.
A new poll by the network shows that the GOP is now poised to pick up one--yes one, as in (1)--House seat in the fall.
Which means, as Meidas Touch makes clear:
Democrats would retain control.
It's worth noting that Fox News has a well-respected polling department despite its at best loose relationship to the truth in its prime time line-up--meaning these are numbers to take seriously.
Of course, it's still only September and much could change by November--so don't go getting complacent. But Fox's findings should have Republicans all over the country on high alert.
The network's poll focused on four key issues for the midterms: crime and inflation, which favor Republicans, and abortion and the future of democracy itself, which favor Democrats.
Those four issues easily split between the two parties. But taken together, Fox found that if Election Day were today, Democrats would lead Republicans by three percentage points, which translates into a gain of one single House seat for Republicans.
Fox's numbers are part of a fairly shocking trend. In the network's polling last month, the two parties were evenly tied at 41%. Prior to that, every poll since December had Republicans leading by as much as seven points.
Fox's polling is just the latest indication that the GOP's all-out attacks on abortion, and its overlapping attacks on democracy, may prove to be a grave miscalculation.
As has been widely reported, new voter registrations by women have surged by historic numbers since the June 24 overturn of Roe v. Wade, both nationally and in some of the deepest-red states in the country, like Alabama and Idaho.
In reliably Republican Kansas, that surge was upward of 60%, and a state abortion ban was defeated there last month in a landslide nobody, even Democrats, saw coming.
Many Republican candidates have even begun softening their stances on abortion in response, including Arizona's far-right candidate for Senate, Blake Masters, who scrubbed his website of any evidence of his extreme abortion views and replaced them with a more moderate take.
Fox's poll bears out this shift even more starkly, finding that voters disapprove of the SCOTUS in general by a 10-point margin and its action on Roe two-to-one.
On Twitter, Fox News' polling definitely caught people's attention.
And it left many liberals feeling cautiously hopeful and determined to fight to win in November.
Fox's poll was likely conducted before Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's wildly unpopular proposed national ban on abortion after 15 weeks, so next month's polling just might look even worse for Republicans.
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