“In every state where I’ve been measuring turnout changes relative to previous midterms, I’m seeing a clear advantage on the Republican side", John Couvillon, the founder of the polling firm JMC Analytics, told the New York Post on Wednesday.
Earlier, the polling firm's report outlined three potential factors at play during this year's midterms: first, partisan enthusiasm; second, voter registration changes; third, the overall political climate.
First, as of 18 May, GOP voters made up 54.9% of the turnout in Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. The Post noted that this figure increases to 60.9% of turnout when all 10 states that have held primaries so far in 2022 are taken into account.
Overall turnout is up 21% from 2018 which was a high turnout year and led to the Dems' taking the House of Representatives. However, this year, the Dem turnout has increased by only 3%, while the Republican turnout jumped by a whopping 38%, as Couvillon tweeted on 18 May.
Even though there are still over 170 days before the midterms, primaries data indicates that “states that are swinging and are Republican are going to move far to the right", the JMC Analytics founder told the Post.
Second, "in states with voter registration by political party, the change in partisan voter registration since the Biden inauguration can be an additional barometer of whether or not the political winds have shifted", according to the JMC Analytics report.
According to the polling firm, between October 2021 and May 2022, the number of Republicans increased by 51,000 and the number of Independents increased 395,000. For comparison's sake, the number of Democrats declined by 628,000 within the same period of time. "For proper context, 122 million registered voters were tracked in states with partisan voter registration", the firm specified.
Third, the overall political climate indicates that the Dems should "remain concerned", according to JMC Analytics: "Midterms are typically a referendum on the party in power, particularly the president".
However, Joe Biden's approval rating is in free fall, hovering around 38-39%. Given that he was elected with 51% of the popular vote, the drop appears to be substantial and signals an obvious defection from his camp, according to the polling company.
Biden's approval rating started plummeting dramatically after the US' botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic, soaring gas prices, 40-year high inflation, and a looming recession have dealt yet another blow to Biden's approval numbers.
In addition to that, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's internal poll found that the generic Republican candidate is leading the generic Democratic candidate by an eight-point margin in highly competitive battleground districts, according to US conservative website The Daily Wire, which believes that the emerging trends are particularly concerning for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s majority.