Gallup: Democrats Back on Top

Democrats Match Their 2018 Momentum In Trump’s First Midterm

After leaning Republican at the start of the year, voters now give Democrats the edge in party identification.

Gallup’s latest survey shows a +7 Democratic Party ID lead—the same level that preceded Democrats’ 41-seat House gain in 2018. Quinnipiac polling shows a similar shift.
— Gallup: Democrats Regain Advantage in Party Affiliation; Daily Beast: ‘Shocking’ Swing to Dems Before Midterms)

Early Test of Midterm Strength — in 13 Days

Virginia and New Jersey head to the polls in less than two weeks to pick new governors, giving everyone an early read on the political weather heading into the 2026 midterms. Both states lean blue but have histories of surprise flips — and polls in both contests show Democrats ahead with Republicans stronger in early voting.

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Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.

53 thoughts on “Gallup: Democrats Back on Top”


  2. President Trump is literally tearing down the White House to build his fantasy ballroom, another Republican has been exposed for sending racist text messages and praising Nazis, and police in Alabama forcibly detained a 61 year-old woman who wore an inflatable penis costume to the “No Kings” rally.


  4. Michael Kosta checks in on Trump’s latest White House makeover, which includes demolishing the First Lady’s quarters to build a gigantic ballroom in the East Wing. Plus, while a Democrat apologizes for problematic Reddit posts, Trump’s nominee for special counsel blames his pro-Nazi text messages on AI, and Ronny Chieng teaches politicians how to get away with racism.

  5. another comic last night that says Dodo is planning to stick around even after 2028 election.

    Seth Meyers does his monologue for Tuesday, October 21, before a “kindness” supporter in the audience asks Seth to lay off RFK Jr.

  6. as to the new polling:
    Good news for a change. Now, if we can only keep up the big MO until the election! That is, if there’ll even be an election given the likelihood martial law will be called by then cancelling said election.

  7. Here’s a glimpse of inflation subsiding by lowering the price of healthcare under Dumbass. WaPo.

    […]
    Nationally, the average marketplace consumer will pay $1,904 in annual premiums next year, up from $888 in 2025, according to KFF.
    The situation is particularly acute in Georgia, which recorded the second-highest enrollment of any state-run marketplace this year and posted prices for 2026 earlier in October. About 96 percent of marketplace enrollees in Georgia received subsidies this year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank that supports extending the subsidies.
    Now Georgians browsing the state website are seeing estimated monthly costs double or even triple, depending on their incomes, as lower subsidy thresholds resume.
    “We have people saying they will have to choose between their monthly premiums and mortgage,” said Natasha Taylor, deputy director of Georgia Watch, a consumer advocacy group.
    For example, a family of four earning $82,000 a year in Georgia could see their annual premium double to around $7,000 for a plan with midrange coverage, according to a CBPP analysis. If that family earned at least $130,000, they would have to pay the full cost of the annual premium, about $24,000 instead of $11,000.
    […]

    Wait, what?

  8. Early Test of Midterm Strength — in 13 Days

    Virginia and New Jersey head to the polls in less than two weeks to pick new governors, giving everyone an early read on the political weather heading into the 2026 midterms. Both states lean blue but have histories of surprise flips — and polls in both contests show Democrats ahead but with Republicans stronger in early voting.

  9. Considering what an absolute abomination the Republican Fascist Party is, and that they’ve harmed everyone in this country except the small percentage that are super-wealthy…Dems are NOT doing well. Those numbers should be in the double digits.

    The Dems, as usual, have a messaging problem. Part of that is because they are beholden to big donors, notably AIPAC. Another part is the rusty, old chains of the DNC; Bernie and AOC and Mamdani are the way forward.

    It’s still the economy, stupid, but with a twist.

    It’s income inequality, stupid. EVERYTHING needs to tie back to that.

  11. Agreed, BiD. And I say Stephen Miller is about to cost Republicans another midterm. Just look up 2018 and kids in cages. That was also his handiwork.

    Let’s have a chat today: Are Democrats surging? If so, why? And how to keep it going.

  13. https://www.tag24.com/politics/refugees/ice-buying-guided-missile-warheads-as-spending-skyrockets-under-trump-3430906

    ICE buying “guided missile warheads” as spending skyrockets under Trump

    The news outlet reported that from January 20 to October 18, new spending in the small arms category totaled $71,515,762. Most of that money went toward guns and armor, but ICE also bought chemical weapons and “guided missile warheads and explosive components.”

    *Someone please explain why ICE needs guided missiles. ???

    (Sturg was the only response last night.)

  14. Latest VA numbers:
    State Navigate poll | 10/17-10/20 LV
    Virginia Governor
    🟦Abigail Spanberger 55%
    🟥Winsome Earle-Sears 42%
    —
    Virginia Attorney General
    🟦Jay Jones 50%
    🟥Jason Miyares 45%
    —
    Virginia Lt. Governor
    🟦Ghazala Hashmi 53%
    🟥John Reid 42%
    —
    Virginia House of Delegates
    🟦Democratic 53%
    🟥Republican 41%

  15. Tearing shit down on purpose, it’s what he has always done, starting with a historic department store in NYC to put up the eyesore Trump Tower.

  16. I think the images of them destroying the White House could be a game changer in the elections. It’s a rare DC story that broke through to pop media like Inside Edition.

    National Trust For Historic Preservation Seeks Demolition Pause
    Statement in Response to the Proposed Construction of the White House Ballroom

    Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation sent a letter to the National Capital Planning Commission, the National Park Service, and the Commission of Fine Arts regarding proposed construction of the White House ballroom.

    Carol Quillen, President and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, issued the following statement to accompany the letter:

    “Our mission is to protect America’s significant historic sites and to advocate for historic preservation as a core public value, and our congressional charter obligates us to facilitate public participation in the preservation of sites, buildings, and objects of national significance or interest.

    We acknowledge the utility of a larger meeting space at the White House, but we are deeply concerned that the massing and height of the proposed new construction will overwhelm the White House itself—it is 55,000 square feet—and may also permanently disrupt the carefully balanced classical design of the White House with its two smaller, and lower, East and West Wings.

    We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes, including consultation and review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts, both of which have authority to review new construction at the White House, and to invite comments from the American people.

    These processes provide an essential opportunity for transparency and public engagement—values that have guided preservation of the White House under every administration going back to the public competition in 1792 that produced the building’s original design. Doing so will help ensure that the project honors the exceptional historic significance of the White House and its grounds and acknowledges the investment that the American people have in the preservation of this beloved place.

    The National Trust stands ready to assist the White House, the National Park Service, and relevant review agencies in exploring design alternatives and modifications that would accomplish the objectives of the Administration while preserving the historic integrity and symbolism of the People’s House.”

    About the National Trust for Historic Preservation
    The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a privately-funded nonprofit organization dedicated to helping communities maintain and enhance the power of historic places. Chartered by Congress in 1949 and supported by partners, friends, and champions nationwide, we help preserve the places and stories that make communities unique. Through the stewardship and revitalization of historic sites, we help communities foster economic growth, create healthier environments, and build a stronger, shared sense of civic duty and belonging. — https://savingplaces.org/

  17. BID, Homeland Security and other local police agencies did not need tanks after 9/11 but they were given gobs of money and needed to spend it on something. The last thing a government agency wants to have at the end of a fiscal year is unspent grant money.

  18. In case you missed Nicole Wallace interview with Jeff Daniels, he sang his song Crazy World written for the No Kings march.

  19. https://www.latintimes.com/perfect-murder-family-trinidadian-fisherman-killed-us-strike-caribbean-demands-proof-590643

    The family of Chad “Charpo” Joseph, a 26-year-old fisherman from Trinidad and Tobago, has accused U.S. President Donald Trump of committing what they called a “perfect murder” after Joseph was reportedly killed in a U.S. military strike on a boat in the southern Caribbean this week.

    *Orange Adolf admitted that the US committed “murder.”

    “I’m feeling very hurt. You know why? Donald Trump took a father, a brother, an uncle, and a nephew from families. Donald Trump don’t care what he is doing,” said Afisha Clement, Joseph’s cousin, speaking to Reuters outside the family’s modest home in the fishing village of Las Cuevas. “If you say a boat has narcotics on it, where is the narcotics? We want evidence, we want proof. There is nothing.”

  21. Craig – I’ve heard they blocked off Lafayette Park, trying to obstruct the view, and that Treasury employees who can see it from their vantage point have been ordered not to share pictures.

    Apparently, the demolition company is getting heat, too. How is this not going to cause structural damage to the rest of the WH?

    Am I the only one calling Congress about this (or anything)?

  22. When Donald Trump Razed the Bonwit Teller Building, He Promised the Met Its Art Deco Friezes. A New Book Details How He Pulverized Them Instead.

    Donald Trump’s relationship to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was permanently damaged early on. He refused to donate artworks that he had promised to the museum and instead had them destroyed, along with a venerable building that had played an important role in American art history.At that site, the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in Manhattan at which Trump constructed his prestige project Trump Tower between 1980 and 1982, the flagship store of the luxury department store chain Bonwit Teller and Co. had earlier stood. The 1929 building was the work of the same architects who had designed Grand Central Terminal, Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore. It was intended originally to house the women’s department store Stewart. Bonwit Teller, who took over the building in 1930 and opened it anew, soon worked with world-famous artists. Starting in 1936, the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí regularly decorated the windows with spectacular installations, for example in 1939, working with the theme “night and day.” In the 1950s, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg worked for the company on the side as window dressers, using the pseudonym “Matson Jones.” Among other things, Johns displayed his now iconic painting Flag on Orange Field behind a mannequin in the windows in 1957. That same year in the same place, Rauschenberg showed his Red Combine Painting along with others. Two years earlier, the large photographic work Blue Ceiling Matson Jones could be seen in the background of the Bonwit Teller windows.
    In 1959, James Rosenquist was also working for the department store. A half century later, he recalled: “By the late 1950s I’d begun to lead a double life. In the daytime I painted billboards and designed display windows for Bonwit Teller, Tiffany’s, and Bloomingdale’s; at night and on weekends I hung out with artists and painted.” In 1961, five large-format paintings by the then almost completely unknown artist Andy Warhol stood and were hung in the windows on Fifth Avenue. Warhol was then earning his living mostly with advertising assignments, starting in 1951 with work for Bonwit Teller display director Gene Moore. At the time, this descendant of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants was not taken seriously as a painter. Ten years later, Warhol changed his approach, putting his own works in the windows of Bonwit Teller, and his global career took off. Today a museum director would kill for one of these paintings—among them, the now famous Blast with its Superman theme, and Before and After 1 which depicts a nose job. “For more than 50 years, Bonwit Teller had an eye for the New York avant-garde art scene,” as the scholarly publication The Art Story summarized the meaning of this New York art site. “Under Moore’s direction in the midcentury, Bonwit Teller gave many modern artists their start in the world of art and design. With free creative reign, avant-garde artists experimented in the department store window, turning a glass case into an alternative art space, and introducing the public to new and exciting styles.”
    After all, Trump hadn’t bought the Bonwit Teller building for $15 million in 1979 when the department store went bankrupt in order to preserve an historical monument. He wanted to create a monument to himself: Trump Tower. The demolition was already decided upon when the contracts were signed. And the art that decorated the building was only of interest to the developer for a short time, when he believed that he could do some business with it and buff up his reputation, Trump’s eternal principle when it comes to art.

  24. I haven’t asked them but my maggers probably think it’s funny. Dodo is a laugh riot for them.

  25. The Most Dangerous Man in the US Senate?

    shaping Trumpism into a coherent ideology that melds nativism and oligarchism. And they present as much danger—possibly more?—to American society as the undisciplined, erratic wannabe-autocrat who leads the MAGA cult. One of these Trumpers is Eric Schmitt.

    Never heard of him? He’s the junior US senator from Missouri, a Republican, naturally. He was elected in the 2022 election. Prior to that he was the Show Me State’s attorney general. In that position, he championed Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election and supported failed lawsuits that tried to overturn the election results. He signed an amicus brief that contended LGBTQ people were not protected by workplace discrimination bans. He filed lawsuits to kill the Affordable Care Act. He sued the Biden administration, alleging it was censoring anti-vaccine activism. He’s full MAGA.

    In the Senate, he has not yet become a national figure. But it’s clear this 50-year-old career politician has supersize ambitions.

    …grievances held by white voters of today, arguing that those who don’t accept this particular view of American greatness are the same folks responsible for the economic policies and decisions that have hollowed out middle America and left many Main Streets in tatters. He is integrating racial and economic resentments, with a dash of Christian nationalism, into a coherent and divisive strategy for prosecuting the culture war against them: unidentified elites, critics of American society, and…well, fill in the blanks.

    All of this is present in the Trumpism espoused by Dear Leader. But Schmitt more aptly combines explicit nativism, implied white supremacy, purported economic populism, and anti-elitism into a neat package, and he’s a damn good salesman for this noxious brew.

    He’s a crafty and disingenuous fellow who’s skilled at performative politics. Two weeks after this speech and six days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where FBI Director Kash Patel was the witness, Schmitt used the occasion to describe America as in the grips of a titanic battle between good and evil, with the latter being a left that encourages political violence. He cited instances of violence committed by people with left-leaning agendas, but absent from his list were shootings and massacres perpetrated by those motivated by conservative beliefs, such as the killing of Democrats in Minnesota by a Trump supporter. He also ignored January 6, the largest act of insurrectionist violence since the Civil War.

    Don’t give me this both-sides bullshit,” Schmitt angrily exclaimed. He claimed that political violence in the United States is happening on a “mass scale” and is “not organic.”

    *Dems need to paint the “elites” as the super-wealthy who live in a different America than their average constituents.

  26. You know, as I’m getting older I’m getting lazier, and typing things like Orange Adolph, Mango Moron, Dictator on Day One, and even Dumbass just wears me out. I think for the foreseeable future I’ll be referring to Dumbass as DOA, short for Dumbass, Orange Adolph. Just a heads up.

  27. Ivy – Yep, when I asked mine if they’d seen what was being done, they claimed they didn’t know. Sent them an article with pictures. “Interesting,” was the only comment. One of the fam in California called me yesterday and never mentioned anything, but they are probably still shocked that they weren’t swept up in the rapture. How can folks with college educations, some in science and a few with advanced degrees, believe in the orange liar?

  28. No votes. No blueprint. No clue.
    Trump’s remodeling democracy again — starting with the White House.
    At least ask before you bulldoze the country’s living room.

    🎥 Watch more Plain Thoughts →

  32. Pogeaux……DOA…….they’ll accuse you of fomenting rebellion. Advocating violence. You know, the stuff they do all the time.

  35. Study Lad, I ain’t advocating nuthin. The most I could be convicted of is wishful thinking. But then again, they thought about going after Comey for posting a picture of sea shells on a beach. I may just rethink this.

  36. Poobah, those 13 GOOPERS find themselves between their constituents and their monarch. Afraid they’ll lose if their constituents lose access to affordable healthcare and afraid they’ll be primaried if they tell Mikey to stop the shutdown and negotiate on the extension of the credits. What’s a gutless gooper to do?

  38. Hope DOA goes room temp before a single piece of his cursed ballroom is erected. The rest of his brood needs to be driven off of the continent. Let them live with the Saudis…or in Argentina, which was a N&zi refuge in the 1940s.

  41. Mikey’s boxed himself in on the Epstein Shutdown stuff. All he has to do to make it go away is swear Grijalva in. She can’t do anything regarding the discharge petition until he calls the House into session, so aside from looking like a pussy, there’s no downside to swearing her in that I can see. As long as he doesn’t the “Epstein Shutdown” looks like that’s what it is.

  43. If you are going to the White House, tourist, Fed employee meeting with administration staff, friend of somebody, you go to the East Wing. Removing the East Wing means staff have to go somewhere else. Not that krasnov cares about any of that. Obama was there, time to get rid of it. West Wing is next, its destruction is maybe next year the way sfb works.

  44. I understand that there is a new dance craze sweeping the nation. (Remember Dance Crazes sweeping the nation?) It has its very own rock song. It’s said to be even more tantalizing and evocative than “The Dirty Dog” ever was.
    Make way for
    THE EPSTEIN SHUFFLE

  45. Open Mic chat tomorrow about 2pm ET — for starters I’ll be talking to a long time Virginia Democratic player about how Dems are going to do in 12 days, if it’ll tell us anything about midterms.

  47. https://people.com/white-house-finally-admits-the-roosevelt-era-east-wing-is-being-demolished-despite-trump-s-promises-report-11835353

    In a Wednesday, Oct. 22 article published by The New York Times, the outlet claimed to have confirmed the demolition of the East Wing with a senior official who was not authorized to publicly speak about the work, which is slated to be completed by this weekend.
    ***

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Emergency_Operations_Center

    The Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC, PEE-ock) is a bunker underneath the East Wing of the White House. It serves as a secure shelter and communications center for the president of the United States and others in case of an emergency.

    ???

  49. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/author-michael-wolff-files-suit-melania-trump-jeffrey-epstein-threat-rcna239257

    Author Michael Wolff has filed suit against first lady Melania Trump, charging that she threatened a $1 billion legal action against him in order to stop him from reporting and writing on her alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

    Mrs. Trump’s claims are made for the sole purpose of harassing, intimidating, punishing or otherwise maliciously inhibiting Mr. Wolff’s free exercise of speech,” said the suit, which was filed Tuesday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

    The filing includes as an attachment a letter from Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, sent to Wolff last week demanding the “Fire and Fury” author retract and apologize for comments he’s made publicly linking his client to the notorious sex offender, and makes “a monetary proposal to Mrs. Trump to ameliorate the harm that you have caused.”

    *Yes, Sturg, it’s the Epstein Ballroom & it should only be referred to as such.

  51. https://abc7.com/post/governor-gavin-newsom-deploying-california-national-guard-support-food-banks-statewide/18056638/

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday he will deploy National Guard troops to support food banks in November, a move that comes in light of anticipated delays to federal food assistance amid the government shutdown.

    About 40 million low-income people across the U.S., including roughly 5.5 million in California, receive federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. But Newsom, a Democrat, warned families should expect an interruption to those benefits next month.

    “This is serious, this is urgent – and requires immediate action,” he said.

  52. Nah, the throne room is the toilet.

    The Epstein Ballroom will be a bigger bother to him.

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