After one NPR poll last week suggested GOP voter enthusiasm was spiking to match that of Democrats, congressional Republicans started selling the narrative that the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation was benefitting the GOP more than Democrats. Washington pundits bought it and nearly every outlet ran with some story reporting that Republicans were surging while Democrats had overplayed their hand.
Two new polls this week have already put a hole in that spin, with both showing a roughly 10-point enthusiasm advantage among Democratic voters. As for the Kavanaugh debate, CNN found Democratic urgency climbing 7 points since September to 62 percent, while GOP enthusiasm had "remained relatively steady," moving up just two points since last month to 52 percent. Likewise, a Politico/Morning Consult poll showed Democratic enthusiasm gaining a full 10 points since September, while GOP enthusiasm, again, remained relatively steady with a 1-point drop.
Gee, how could the Washington punditry have gotten so off course?
Well, thank goddess a dude finally stepped up to say that.
The biggest problem with the pundit takes last week wasn't just that they depicted an uptick in enthusiasm among Republicans—it's that they suggested that uptick was happening exclusively among GOP voters and to the clear detriment of Democrats, without any context. It was as if the National Women’s March that dwarfed Trump’s inauguration hadn’t happened and Democrats hadn’t flipped 40-plus legislative seats blue in special elections during the past two years. But as we are now learning, however much the Kavanaugh’s confirmation served as a force multiplier for Republicans (or not), it appears to have super-charged Democrats even more so, especially among women.
Are you sick and tired of being called a “screamer” by the Republicans? How about giving them an earful with $3 to help turn the House and Senate blue on Nov. 6.
The post-Kavanaugh polling shows the generic ballot getting better for Democrats, boosting their chances of taking the House (though not the Senate). Much of that Democratic energy is coming from women, who favor Democratic candidates over Republican ones by fully 30 points (63-33 percent) in the CNN poll. CNN writes:
If women were to vote as the likely voter number suggests, it would be Democrats strongest performance in the House race in the history of modern exit polling (back to 1976). The previous record for women voting Democratic was in 1982, when Democrats got the nod of 58% of women voters.
Women are also more enthusiastic to vote this year than men—only by 4 points (57 - 53 percent) according to CNN, but that's a significant turnaround from both 2010 and 2014, when male voters were more energized than female voters.
Additionally, Democratic women are more energized than Republican women. The Politico/Morning Consult poll found that Democratic women had a 10-point advantage over Republican women when it came to being "very enthusiastic" about voting next month, 55-45 percent. (Democratic men also had a 7-point "very enthusiastic" advantage over Republican men, 51-44 percent.)
Republicans have moved on now to selling Washington on the notion that criticizing mostly-female protesters as an “angry mob” of “screamers” is really working to their advantage. Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio have all invoked scary notions of “mob rule” in some form or another. Notice anything else? They’re all dudes.
It’s almost as if they forgot women got the right to vote last century. But more than likely, they’ve simply decided they can overpower the female surge by pumping Trump’s base of outraged male voters full of grievous victimhood. Let the GOP dudes go ahead and keep peddling that narrative right up until Nov. 6—the only poll that counts. That’s when women will have their say.