WASHINGTON — Democrats seem to be getting their mojo back as the midterm season heats up.
Democrats topped Republicans on the generic congressional ballot by a considerable six points, 52% to 46%, scoring the highest of any party on that metric in the history of the survey commissioned by Fox News.
The minority party also made massive gains on key issues, crushing Republicans on affordability by 14 points, health care by 21 points, helping the middle class by 14 points, transgender issues by 22 points, and even taxes by one point.
“Democrats are taking back the House in November,” a confident Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) spokesperson, Justin Chermol, declared.
Republicans still retain an advantage on border security by 15 points, national security by 12, immigration by 5 and tackling the national deficit by 2 points.
But the warning signs for Republicans are stark, with President Trump’s approval rating among Independent voters underwater by 40 points, a second-term low.
Republicans have long been seen as the underdog heading into the midterms, given that historically the party in control of the White House has lost seats in the lower chamber during all but two elections since 1938.
Recently, Republicans suffered a setback after Democrats flipped the Texas state Senate in District 9, winning by 14 percentage points, despite Trump crushing in that district by 17 points in 2024.
While that was a special election with different turnout dynamics than midterm cycles, the victory in Texas follows an electoral drubbing for Republicans in off-year 2025 races in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere.
In most of those races, Democrats focused on an anti-Trump and affordability message.
Trump has acknowledged the hurdles that Republicans face heading into the midterms and is gearing up for a campaign blitz this year in a bid to avoid a midterm shellacking.
“Presidents, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, when they win, it doesn’t make any difference. They seem to lose the midterms,” Trump told Fox News’ Will Cain last week.
“Maybe [voters] want to put up a guard fence. You just don’t know. It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Hopefully, we’re going to change that around. We’re doing great.”
Democrats are up overall by 4.8 percentage points in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polling. At this point in the 2018 midterm cycle, Dems were up 7.3 percentage points in the RCP aggregate.
They won 41 seats that election, though the House is generally thought to be subject to less dramatic swings this time due to more intense gerrymandering over recent years.
Despite their polling bright spots, Democrats appear to be at a roughly $100 million financial disadvantage relative to Republicans heading into November, counting the main party committees.
The Democratic National Committee has $14 million cash on hand but $17.5 million in debt, according to their latest financial disclosures.
Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee has $95.1 million in its coffers and no debt.
The Fox News poll sampled 1,005 registered voters from Jan. 23–26 with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Fox News relied on the Democratic firm Beacon Research and the Republican firm Shaw & Company Research to conduct the survey.
