Republicans need to win five seats in the lower house and only one in the Senate to regain the majority, lost last year. The GOP is also expected to benefit from the redrawing of congressional district boundaries, which occurs once every ten years, in key swing states.
"Among registered voters, 46-41 percent say they would like the Republican Party to win control of the US House of Representatives and 46 - 42 percent say they want to see the Republican Party win control of the US Senate," a press release explaining the poll said.
52 percent of respondents believe that Democrats have gone too “far to the left,” while 35 percent said that Republicans have “moved too far to the right.” Nevertheless, 31 percent of Americans approve of Democrats’ performance in Congress, while 25 percent said the same for the GOP.
One caveat is whether or how strongly the Republican candidate supports former President Donald Trump.
If a candidate for House or Senate strongly embraces Trump and his ideas, roughly four in ten Americans (42 percent), say they would be less likely to vote for that candidate, the release said.
The poll also examined views of President Joe Biden’s performance in office, with respondents giving the president a negative 36-53 percent job approval rating, while 10 percent did not offer an opinion. It is the lowest job approval rating for Biden ever recorded in Quinnipiac polling, the release added.
Biden also received his lowest rating so far on four separate issues: handling of the pandemic (negative 45-50 percent); climate change (41-48 percent); the economy (34-59 percent) and foreign policy (33-55 percent), according to the release.
An earlier poll from Langer Research Associates showed similar results, with the gap in favor of Republicans at a record 10 percent. In the eight swing states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the GOP dominates by 23 percent, with only 35 persent of respondents saying they would vote for Democrats and 58 percent - for Republicans. In other states, the gap stands at only 7 percent (42 and 49 percent).