The Hill notes that two Democratic victories in legislative special elections in Florida and New Hampshire this week bring to eight the number of state-level seats Democrats have taken from Republicans in 27 special elections since last year’s election. During the same stretch, Republicans have flipped zero seats.
If you think that Democratic streak is cause for optimism for 2018, Public Policy Polling says you betcha. Their latest polling shows a variety of positive signs for anyone not swearing fealty to the Manhattan billionaire currently occupying the White House:
- “By a 47/34 spread, voters say they trust Kimmel more than the Republicans in Congress when it comes to health care issues.”
- “…the Affordable Care Act beats out the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill 53-34, and only 32% of voters think the best path forward on health care is to repeal the Affordable Care Act while 62% think it’s best to keep it and makes fixes as necessary.”
- “A plurality of voters- 47%- consider Trump to be mentally unbalanced to only 45% who consider him to be mentally stable.”
- “Only 35% of voters think Trump has fulfilled his core campaign promise to ‘Make America Great Again’ to 53% who think he has not delivered.”
- “Even among Trump’s voters just 32% think he will be able to deliver on his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall. Most Americans don’t want the wall anyway though- just 33% support it to 56% who say they are opposed.”
- “74% of voters think children brought to the US by their immigrant parents and raised in the country should be allowed to stay and apply for citizenship to only 18% who don’t think they should be allowed to. That includes 92/5 support from Clinton voters and 52/34 support even from Trump voters.”
If PPP’s numbers hold up, the campaign path for Democrats seems pretty clear: talk about health care in every speech, stand up for immigrants, and remind people that Republicans are, if not crazy like Trump, then extremists who don’t deliver on their big talk.