Democrats overperforming with the real swing voters: those who disapprove of both parties

[BeyondGeography]

https://www.nbcnews.com/card/democrats-overperforming-voters-who-disapprove-both-parties-n894006

President Trump helped win the White House thanks to an overperformance among voters who disliked both Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But ahead of November's midterms, Democrats are the ones cleaning up with this key constituency, data from the latest NBC/WSJ poll shows.

Democrats have a 30-point advantage over Republicans among this constituency on the generic ballot, a stronger lead than Republicans had during each of their midterm wave years of 2010 and 2014. Fifty-five percent of these voters back Democrats, compared to just 25 percent who back Republicans.

...What’s more in our current poll, these voters disproportionately are down on Trump (68 percent disapprove of his job, versus 52 percent of all voters), and they are enthusiastic about the upcoming midterms (63 percent of them have high interest, versus 55 percent of all voters who say this).

As we wrote about last month, Trump's strength among these voters was one of the clues we missed during the 2016 election. And it was an influential clue, as those voters made up 18 percent of the electorate in the merged NBC/WSJ polls in 2016.

[kcr]

1. How about that

Kind of takes some air out of the Dems are Losers/Weak/Need New Leadership talking points that have been ramping up lately.

[Wounded Bear]

2. Just sent in my primary ballot...

oh, and this thread.

[beachbum bob]

3. Those voters couldn't support the lesser of 2 evils and perhaps learned a lesson

[Jim Lane]

7. They DID support what they saw as the lesser evil

Of course, "evil" is probably too strong a term for describing the attitudes of most of them. These are voters who disliked or disapproved of both Clinton and Trump.

But the OP isn't talking about people who, disliking both major-party candidates, voted third-party or sat it out. There were some such, of course, but they were a minority. Of the people who disapproved of both Clinton and Trump, the majority held their noses and voted for one of them anyway -- and most of them voted for Trump as the less objectionable.

It's worth remembering that, since the era of modern polling began, no other presidential election has been contested between two major-party candidates who had such high unfavorable ratings.

[beachbum bob]

9. a vote for stein was not a vote for lesser of 2 evils, it was a vote FOR trump, same with the Nader

voters in 2000

but hell, if the stein voters won't learn their lesson about the consequences and the evil that happened because of THEIR vote, we might as well accept we are going to lose elections like 2000 and 2016 every time

[Jim Lane]

10. Please set aside your Stein obsession for one minute

The article excerpted in the OP reports that voters who disliked both Trump and Clinton "made up 18 percent of the electorate in the merged NBC/WSJ polls in 2016." Stein got just under 1 percent of the vote. Thus, although I'm sure that virtually all of Stein's voters disliked both major-party candidates, it doesn't work the other way. Among voters who disliked both major-party candidates, the overwhelming majority did not vote for Stein (or, for that matter, for Johnson or for McMullin).

Instead, these voters appeared to recognize that, as a practical matter, one of the candidates they disliked was going to become President anyway. Therefore, they took the practical course of voting for a candidate they disliked. They had to decide which major-party candidate they disliked less.

The key takeaway from the article is that, in 2016, these "double-dissatisfied" voters ended up voting predominantly for Trump, but that current generic-ballot polling for 2018 shows them to be favoring the Democrats

[Persondem]

4. Hopeful news. Thank you for posting this. K & R nt

[tblue37]

5. K&R for visibility. nt

[gratuitous]

6. Uh oh

Democrats had better stop being on the popular side of issues like health care, the environment, and worker pay. They might win elections, and then where would we be? The America that Trump and the Republicans are trying so hard to bring into being, where the wealthy reign supreme, could be in danger!

[Awsi Dooger]

8. Most interesting article I've seen in some time

Much appreciated. I always prefer logical numbers above subjective flails

[dalton99a]

11. Good news. GOTV!