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Exclusive Maru/GZERO poll: Tired of fighting, slim majority of Americans back divided government
Many pundits in the US have long declared the age of political bipartisanship dead. And in the age of QAnon, “lock her up,” and “defund the police,” it’s easy to see how they might have reached such a conclusion.
Still, as divided government returns to Washington – with the GOP now in control of the House of Representatives – it appears that the constant mudslinging between Democrats and Republicans is not necessarily appealing to American voters.
An exclusive new poll conducted by Maru Public Opinion and GZERO Media found that a narrow majority of Americans – both Republicans and Democrats – think divided government is better for the country. Of the randomly selected 1,517 American adults polled (estimated margin of error of +/- 2.5%), 51% said they prefer split government, meaning that both parties control one chamber of Congress each, or that control of the legislative and executive branches is split between the GOP and Dems.
Indeed, this sentiment is even stronger among Republican voters, with 32% of them saying it is better for one party to control both chambers of Congress compared to 52% of Dem-leaning voters who said they prefer unified government.
The thing with divided government is that it means that an increased number of divergent views will seek to shape the law-making process. In short, less law-making gets done. To make progress and overcome obstructionist efforts, compromise is key.
Still, with the awareness that less legislation will get passed by a divided government, voters polled by Maru still think this is the better way. Consider that 69% of those polled said that it’s more important for the new Congress to pass less legislation with bipartisan support than for one party to get more done without buy-in from the other side.
While that conciliatory sentiment might seem incongruous with what we’ve seen in US politics in recent years, it reflects the main takeaways of the recent midterm elections, when US voters mostly repudiated intransigent candidates on both sides of the aisle. Consider that 83% of polled voters said they are more likely to back a candidate who supports bipartisanship, a call backed by 79% of GOP voters and 88% of Dems. Interestingly, just 17% of those polled said they would be less likely to back a lawmaker who supports bipartisanship.
At a time when US politics is framed as a zero-sum game – with a legislative win for President Joe Biden often cast as a loss for the GOP – how then do we reconcile recent political trends with the poll’s findings? (In the GOP, for instance, lawmakers who bucked the party by speaking out against former President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill were shunned.)
John Wright, Maru’s executive vice president, says that “the nature of US politics is most often the desire of opposing sides to want the other party to act in a bipartisan fashion to get things done to achieve their own ends.”
“Because of that built-in bias,” Wright explains, “the sentiment may be there for compromise, but it’s almost always a one-way street of expectation, so it rarely occurs.” Indeed, this view, whereby many lawmakers fear that compromise will lead to electoral backlash, helps explain why legislators on both sides of the aisle have doubled down on their positions on many divisive issues, like abortion, rather than seek a middle ground.
So with the 118th Congress having just been sworn in, what might we expect over the next two years? “Given the split between the House and the Senate for the next couple of years, especially with the run-up to the presidential election [in 2024], compromise may be almost impossible to find,” Wright says, suggesting that the recently passed $1.7 trillion spending bill is likely to be the last bit of compromise we see for some time.
U.S. President Joe Biden campaigns in support of Democrats in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
US midterms: Did Democrats blow it?
Bracing for some big losses in midterm elections on Tuesday, many Democrats are expressing disbelief at their impending doom. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently told the New York Times, “I cannot believe anybody would vote for these people,” referring to Republicans on the ballot.
With Democrats fighting to retain control of Congress and with some formerly safe blue seats now up for grabs, many analysts are asking whether the Dems’ poor electoral prospects were inevitable – the curse of incumbency – or if the party shot itself in the foot with out-of-touch electioneering.
Why are things looking so bleak for Dems?
Midterm elections are always a referendum on incumbency, as demonstrated by the fact that the party in control of the White House has lost Congressional seats in 36 out of 39 midterm races since the Civil War. It’s almost impossible to satisfy voters – particularly those caught in a painful spiral of inflation and recession fears – by advocating for the status quo. That’s the current challenge for Democrats: trying to defend their own track record while simultaneously pushing for change.
Making matters worse is that Dems have virtually no margin for error. Defending a 50-50 split in the Senate, and with only a five-seat shift needed to give the GOP control of the House, it was always going to be an uphill battle for team blue.
Americans are deeply divided, but many are united by a shared sense that the country is in free-fall. This time, however, the Dems – in control of the White House and Congress – are most vulnerable to electoral backlash. What’s most surprising is that this dynamic is also playing out in matchups like gubernatorial races in New York and Oregon that should be slam dunks for Dems regardless of the broader political climate.
But were the 2022 midterms always going to be a fait accompli or do current trends reflect a Democratic faux pas? The answer is … a little of both.
Voters have been direct about their concerns, telling politicians for months that they are worried about gas prices, mortgage repayments, and feeding their kids amid 40-year high inflation rates. They’re also focused on rising crime rates – particularly in big cities – something New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is learning the hard way. Those running for office have not had to engage in guesswork to identify voters' deepest insecurities.
Republicans, for their part, have talked relentlessly about the cost-of-living crunch, driving home the message that their opponents are weak on the economy. Though Democrats have addressed economic grievances here and there, their primary message to voters has been to focus first on democratic ideals – and then on their very real economic fears.
This game plan is coming directly from the top. Indeed, in his first major midterm stump speech on Sept. 1 in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American democracy, President Joe Biden claimed that “equality and democracy are under assault,” imploring Americans to go out and vote. This was also his message in a final pitch to voters over the weekend, when Biden reiterated that “democracy is on the ballot for all of us.”
Clayton Allen, a US analyst at Eurasia Group, says this strategy could prove to be a mistake. Playing up the threat to democracy is “an issue that seems like it performs well with focus groups and base Democratic voters, but doesn’t seem like it’s an especially effective measure in swaying undecided voters,” Allen says.
They’ve also missed an opportunity with regard to the economy. “Democrats haven’t been able to coalesce around a core economic message either, which limits their ability to effectively use economic urgency to appeal to voters,” he adds.
Allen may be right. The Dems’ approach doesn’t seem to be resonating with voters who are overwhelmingly focused on bread-and-butter issues. For instance, independent women voters – a highly sought-after electorate – supported Dems by 14 points in September, but by mid-October flipped to favor Republicans by 18 points.
Jon Lieber, US managing director at Eurasia Group, says that “part of the challenge with the threat to democracy narrative is that it means different things to different people,” adding that “big majorities of Republicans think the media or unsecured ballot boxes is the big threat to democracy and will vote on that.”
But even some Democrats have criticized their party for failing to compensate for earlier economic missteps (the Biden administration last year called inflation “temporary") by conveying a sense of urgency about the state of the economy – now!
Something the Dems should have identified as temporary, however, was the summer boom sparked by the reversal of Roe v. Wade as well as a slate of legislative wins. Indeed, as inflation has remained stubbornly high – still topping 8% – Dems appear to have overplayed their hand, believing that the Supreme Court’s move, unpopular with voters, could get them over the finish line.
Economic turmoil has always been a toxic agent that gives the underdog plenty of ammunition to oust the incumbent party. If Dems lose big on Tuesday, paving the way for a slate of GOP newbies, it will be a boon to Trump as he looks set to announce a run for the White House in 2024.
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Will a GOP House speaker be able to control an unruly caucus?
The US Senate race could go either way, but most pundits and polls point to the House of Representatives turning red after Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Republicans need a net gain of just five seats to flip that chamber, and they are on track to do just that, and then some. Indeed, most polls suggest a double-digit gain for the GOP – not a red wave per se but still a sizable win.
Noise: Much attention has been focused on the impending political fortunes of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican from California who is all but assured to become House speaker next year. In this role, McCarthy will be the leader of all proceedings in the lower chamber, where important business gets done, including government appropriations and impeachment proceedings.
Signal: After four years in opposition, Kevin McCarthy will be eager to take the gavel from current Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But Republicans are a divided tribe, and McCarthy will have his work cut out for him in keeping his caucus together.
This discord is in large part due to ongoing agitation from the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative bloc within the House GOP formed seven years ago in hopes of pushing the party further to the right. The bloc — currently made up of around 35 members — has already tried to alter House rules to give individual lawmakers more power.
Exactly how much power the caucus wields will depend on the size of the GOP majority, but McCarthy has already made clear that he’ll have to acquiesce to at least some of their demands. For example, while the Californian has been a proponent of aid to Ukraine, he has suggested that maintaining the current level of support may not be possible because “they just won’t do it.”
The two most recent Republican House speakers — John Boehner and Paul Ryan — were forced into early retirement due to ugly internal party politics. Will McCarthy be next?
Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
The trouble with Herschel
Signal’s Willis Sparks writes about his Georgia roots and how the world craves authenticity from political leaders.
Where I come from, there are two important institutions – church and football – and worship takes place in both.
I’m a Georgia Bulldog. Unlike the previous four generations of my family, I graduated from a different school, but my family ties to the University of Georgia extend back to the 1850s, and I’ve been watching Georgia football games in Sanford Stadium since 1972. I’m what you call a Dawg to the bone.
I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, on September 6, 1980, when a teenage recruit named Herschel Walker made his legendary college football debut by steamrolling defenders and shocking a sellout crowd of 102,000 fans of a rival team.
I was there for every Athens, Georgia, home game in 1980 as freshman Herschel led my Dawgs to the Promised Land, a national championship. I was there through 1981 and 1982, when Herschel won the Heisman Trophy as college football’s best player.
You have to understand … He stood six feet, two inches tall, weighed 220 pounds, and had Olympic-sprinter speed. That’s not natural. He seemed, to steal a phrase from Shakespeare, to be “made of some other matter than earth.” His performances inspired the wide-eyed shaking of heads.
I never met him. If I had, I’d have been too young and starstruck to speak, and young Herschel would have been too shy to cross the divide. He was Clark Kent as well as Superman, which in our estimation made him still more worthy of love and respect.
I was also on campus when the news dropped that Herschel was skipping his senior year at Georgia to play in a fledgling professional league for a brand new team owned by a flamboyant businessman named Donald J. Trump. That was in 1982.
Forty years later, with the backing of former President Donald J. Trump, Herschel Walker is now a candidate for the United States Senate. And because he’s faced the scrutiny that comes with a bigtime political campaign, we know that the athlete made of some other matter than earth is a man with feet of clay.
We already knew Herschel had struggled with what we used to call “multiple personality disorder.” But because he decided to run for Senate, we now know that Herschel Walker, champion of a national abortion ban, stands accused by two different women of pressuring them to have, and then paying for, abortions for which he shared responsibility – and the physical evidence says it’s true.
We know that Herschel’s ex-wife and son accuse him of physical and emotional abuse. We know that Herschel’s claim that he graduated from the University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class is a lie. He didn’t graduate at all. And then he lied about lying about it.
Then there’s the much bigger problem that when Herschel speaks about policy, he’s often barely coherent.
By the way, Herschel’s Senate opponent is the current incumbent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who continues to serve as pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, a post once held by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (I wasn’t kidding about football and church.) Other Black faith leaders are now making their opinions of Herschel known.
No one wants to know that his boyhood hero is a deeply flawed human being, and it’s not much consolation to be told that he may be so emotionally ill that he can’t see his own dishonesty or abusive behavior. Yet, Herschel may very well be elected to the US Senate next Tuesday.
How did we get here? How has this deeply flawed man reached this point? Around the world, there’s a craving for “authenticity” in our political leaders. British conservatives will back a man who plays the buffoon and can’t comb his hair over someone posh and polished. Ukrainians preferred a TV sitcom star to yet another member of the old political and business elite. Brazilians of the left want a union man, and those on the right back a tough-talking former soldier. Pakistan’s last prime minister, who survived an assassination attempt this week, was famous as a cricketer before he ran for office.
In Herschel’s case, the authentic man of the people has been exposed as a thoroughly inauthentic human being. And yet … he may win because authenticity often becomes defined in tribal terms. Herschel is not a perfect person, some of my fellow Georgians concede, but he’s one of us, not one of them. When he gets to Washington, D.C., he’ll stand up for our values, not theirs.
If Herschel doesn’t win on Tuesday, it may be thanks to another brand of Georgia Republican, the one disturbed by Herschel’s past but who doesn’t want to talk about politics because there’s a huge game this weekend in Athens. These are people who, like me, wish the hero had stayed on his pedestal. A few of those people may skip the vote altogether, and that could be enough to re-elect Warnock in a race so close it may not be decided until a runoff in December.
I won’t lie: I’ve spent much more time this week thinking about the Georgia Bulldogs’ football showdown with Tennessee this Saturday than about midterm elections. And I now vote in New York, not in Georgia.
But I know that, on Tuesday night, whether Herschel wins or loses, I’ll go to bed with a knot in my stomach.
Are US state courts the new battleground?
With Midterm Matters, we are counting down to the US midterm elections on Nov. 8 by separating the signal from the noise on election-related news.
The perception that the US Supreme Court is a partisan institution has increased in recent years. Just 25% of Americans now say that they have confidence in the court, down from an average of 47% between 1973 and 2006, according to Gallup. Confidence in the court has even waned among Republicans, with less than 40% of GOP voters now expressing confidence in the court, compared to 53% in 2020.
Views on court bias and whether it plays an outsized role in politics reached fever-pitch for many this summer with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a move disapproved by 57% of Americans.
Noise: The role of the Supreme Court in US political life has been a big focus leading up to midterm elections, with many Democrats campaigning against the court itself, including President Joe Biden, who recently said, “The Supreme Court and the MAGA Republicans don’t have a clue about the power of women in this country. And they’re soon to find out.”
Signal: The US Supreme Court plays a pivotal role in the system of governance in America, but many of today’s major political battles are taking place at the state level. Consider that the US Supreme Court recently passed on several hot-button issues – including abortion, gun laws, and voting rights – to be arbitrated by the states. Given the court’s conservative bent, this judicial approach will likely persevere for years to come.
While Republicans seem to have understood this dynamic for some time, Democrats have caught up with the trend in recent years. In the 2019-2020 election cycle, a collective $97 million was spent on state court races nationwide. This cycle, parties are investing heavily in partisan judicial races in Ohio, Illinois, and North Carolina.
Looking ahead: With an increased number of election deniers on Republican ballots, debates over the nature of American democracy itself will gain steam over the next few years – and those battles will be waged in state courts. Prepare to see a lot more money enter state judicial races.
Biden warns American democracy is at risk
President Joe Biden took to the airwaves Wednesday night to appeal to American voters ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections. He blamed former President Donald Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 election being stolen and called out the violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul.
“We must with one overwhelming unified voice speak as a country and say there’s no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America,” Biden said.
Since 2020, there have been numerous legal challenges and recounts that tested the election results. “There’s no election in our history that we can be more certain of its results. Every legal challenge that could have been brought was brought. Every recount that could have been undertaken was undertaken. Every recount confirmed the results,” Biden said.
But he added that Republicans are threatening the sanctity of this year’s results through voter intimidation and denialism, noting how many GOP candidates are refusing to say whether they’ll accept the results if they lose. He asked Americans to help preserve democracy by voting.
“We’ll have our differences,” Biden said. “But there’s something else at stake, democracy itself.”
In response to the speech, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted that the president was “desperate to change the subject from inflation, crime, and open borders.”
“Now he’s claiming that democracy only works if his party wins. … Americans aren’t buying it,” McConnell added.
We'll find out exactly what Americans think after next Tuesday.
Hard Numbers: Biden threatens oil companies, Georgia runoff odds, the impacts of gerrymandering, will Oregon flip?
173 billion: President Joe Biden threatened to hit oil companies with a windfall tax if they don’t invest their profits to help ease prices for consumers facing sky-high gas prices as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The collective profits of the seven largest private drillers is nearing $173 billion so far this year. Biden’s threat comes as US voters overwhelmingly cite bread-and-butter issues as the main factor impacting their vote.
50: New polls in Georgia suggest the Senate race between the GOP’s Herschel Walker and Democrat Raphael Warnock is likely headed to a run-off in December. The New York Times/ Siena College poll puts Warnock a few points ahead of his rival, but he still falls just below the 50% threshold needed to win outright. This nail-biter is one of a few races that will determine which party controls the Senate.
59: Just 59 out of 435 seats in the House of Representatives are truly competitive this year, according to the Cook Political Report, which attributes this trend to gerrymandering – undemocratic state redistricting. Republicans only need a net gain of five seats to take control of the lower chamber.
40: Will the liberal state of Oregon get its first Republican governor in 40 years? That’s looking increasingly plausible as GOP candidate Christine Drazan and her Democratic rival Tina Kotek are neck-and-neck in the polls less than a week ahead of the vote. Drazan’s view that Portland – a liberal bastion – has descended into lawlessness under progressive leadership resonates with independents and some Democrats worried about rising crime and homelessness.
Overturning a US election ain't that easy
With Midterm Matters, we are counting down to the US midterm elections on Nov. 8 by separating the signal from the noise on election-related news.
A leading concern for many American voters on the left is that many candidates on next Tuesday’s ballots say the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. That’s not just because they find that opinion indefensible and willfully dumb; it’s because some of these candidates are running for offices that give them access to the processes by which future elections will be held and votes counted.
Noise: The stats are out there. A study by FiveThirtyEight found nearly 200 office seekers “fully deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election.” More than 60 others have publicly raised questions about it, and many more refuse to say what they believe.
These aren’t fringe candidates. FiveThirtyEight’s 2022 midterm election forecast says “116 election deniers and eight election doubters have at least a 95% chance of winning” seats in the US House of Representatives.
At the state level, where presidential elections are conducted, seven election deniers are running for attorney general and seven more for secretary of state. These are the officials who oversee election administration in most states. A secretary of state can refuse to certify an election. A governor can try to submit electoral votes that favor his party’s candidate, and senators and representatives of that party could then vote to count those fake electoral votes.
Signal: These are serious concerns, and the candidacies of election deniers bear close watch. But we shouldn’t oversimplify the processes by which elections are conducted and votes are counted and reported.
There are many people involved in oversight of each state’s elections, and disputed results can be resolved in court — as all of former President Donald Trump’s charges of fraud in the last election were resolved. We should also not assume that every candidate who cries fraud to win votes today will actively seek to overturn elections tomorrow.
The upshot: The election of candidates who cried fraud at the last election is a serious issue we’ll be tracking for the foreseeable future. But no one should pretend it will be easy for anyone to overturn the result of an American election.
How Trump dominates the GOP & "impressed" these DC journalists
Former US President Donald Trump may not be on the ballot for the upcoming midterm elections, but yet again he'll loom large over the vote. Especially for Republicans.
The election is all "about his dominance of the party. It's about currying favor with the king," New York Times journalist Peter Baker tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Baker — who's co-authored a new book about the Trump presidency with The New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser — believes one thing Trump accomplished in his four years in the White House was becoming the most transparent president in US history.
Trump made a different impression on Glasser. For her, the really unprecedented thing the former president did was ... to launch an insurrection at the US Capitol.