After months of missteps, mishaps and misfortune, President Biden and his fellow Democrats are finally enjoying a run of good news.
Landmark climate legislation. A popular plan to lower prescription drug prices. Falling gas prices. Mounting legal problems for Biden’s would-be 2024 opponent, Donald Trump. And new polls that show Democratic candidates gaining ground in key races across the country.
But will it be enough to prevent the sort of electoral bloodbath that a president’s party usually suffers in the midterms? Could Democrats actually “win” in 2022?
According to the latest data, the answer is … possibly. And those are better odds than Biden & Co. had any reason to expect even a few weeks ago.
For decades now, the pattern has been clear. There have been 19 midterms since World War II. In 16 of them, the president’s party lost five or more seats in the House — the number that Republicans need to net this year to take control. Historically speaking, that means Democrats have an 84% chance of losing the House in November. Americans almost always vote against the president in midterm elections.
Factor in Biden’s anemic approval rating (the worst of any modern president at this stage of his first term) and astronomical inflation numbers (the highest since the early 1980s), and it looks like a recipe for Democratic disaster.
And yet the polls are starting to show otherwise.
Over the last month, Biden’s average disapproval rating has fallen more than two points, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight; his average approval rating has risen nearly three points.
That’s not earth-shattering — the president’s net approval rating is still negative by more than 16 points — but it’s also not nothing. Any movement toward Biden — from Democrats who no longer dismiss him as ineffectual, or from independents encouraged by improving economic indicators — is notable.
Likewise, there are signs that presidential popularity — which tends to suffer because of ever-increasing partisanship and polarization — may no longer be the predictor of midterm performance it once was.
Take the crucial “generic ballot” question, which asks voters which party they would prefer to control Congress. Since November 2021, Democrats have trailed Republicans on the generic ballot. But they’ve only trailed by 1 or 2 points, on average — not 16.
And even that dynamic appears to be changing. Amid a spate of fresh surveys that put Democrats ahead of Republicans — by 3 points, according to Monmouth University; by 4 points, according to Morning Consult; by 6 points, according to YouGov — the president’s party just took the lead in FiveThirtyEight’s generic-ballot average for the first time in nearly a year.
Several caveats apply here. The midterms are still more than two months away. Most voters don’t really tune in until after Labor Day. And the pro-Republican impact of gerrymandering — redrawing congressional districts to favor one party over the other — means that Democrats typically have to win the national popular vote by at least a few percentage points just to avoid losing seats in the House.
To reach that threshold, Democrats still have a long way to go; they currently lead Republicans by half a point, on average. Generic-ballot polls usually underestimate GOP support as well. So unless the gap widens significantly, Republicans still stand a good chance — a 77% chance, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecasting model — of flipping the closely divided House.
Still, GOP odds have fallen by 10 points over the last month. Time will tell if they keep falling.
Read More: New polls show Democrats could ‘win’ the 2022 midterms. Should you believe them?