Democrats Open Largest Party ID Lead Over Republicans Since 2009, Buoying Hopes for ‘Blue Tsunami’ Midterm

Democrats have opened their largest party identification lead over Republicans since 2009, when President Obama had just been sworn in following a historic wave election. The 11-point lead over Republicans largely tracks with the generic congressional ballot headed into the midterms, which could be the biggest national win for Democrats in decades. As of Tuesday, Democrats’ lead in the generic ballot polling sits somewhere between seven to nine points, according to aggregates from outfits like SilverBulletin, Decision Desk HQ, and FiftyPlusOne. The generic ballot poll is considered a somewhat helpful marker for how a party is expected to do in a midterm election, though Gallup’s quarterly poll of party identification adds another feather in Democrats’ hat headed into election day. In 2006, Democrats held a ten-point lead over Republicans on the party ID question — a lead which later expanded to 12 points by 2008. In 2010, the year of the Tea Party wave, that lead for Democrats had shrunk back to only one point. In the third quarter of 2024 — weeks before that year’s presidential election — Republicans held a one-point lead on the party ID question, meaning there had been a 12-point shift toward Democrats in less than two years, according to Gallup. Poll results that have been released in the last two weeks have been overwhelmingly positive for Democrats, especially on the Senate front. Both Democratic and Republican outside spending groups have pulled out of North Carolina, all but ceding that Senate race to a popular Democratic former governor, Roy Cooper, who is leading in the polls by around nine points. Republicans have redirected much of that money to Kansas, which last elected a Democratic senator during the Hoover administration. Senator Roger Marshall is currently in a tied race with the Democratic candidate, The Reverend Adam Hamilton, who is the senior pastor of the largest United Methodist congregation in the United States. Republicans and Democrats are similarly pulling ad dollars out of Nebraska’s second congressional district, a district carried by Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 that nevertheless re-elected its GOP representative, Congressman Don Bacon. Mr. Bacon is retiring this year and Democrats are overwhelmingly favored to flip his seat. Another data point elevating Democratic hopes is the participation rate at which Democrats are showing up to cast primary ballots. The number of Democratic ballots cast in primaries this year are about 12 percent greater than the number of GOP ballots submitted. In 2010, 2014, and 2022 — when Republicans made massive gains in Congress — it was GOP voters who were turning out in primaries at higher rates. In 2006 and 2018, when Democrats had their own wave years, the same was true of turnout in those years’ primaries. If the correlation between primary turnout and the final result of the national House popular vote stays true this year, then Democrats are on track to win nationally by more than ten points — the largest margin this century.

Democrats Open Largest Party ID Lead Over Republicans Since 2009, Buoying Hopes for ‘Blue Tsunami’ Midterm

Democrats Open Largest Party ID Lead Over Republicans Since 2009, Buoying Hopes for ‘Blue Tsunami’ Midterm

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