The House Is Not in Play

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Stuart Rothenberg at Roll Call:

Of the major political handicappers, not even one of them thinks the House is likely to flip in November.

Mot the folks at the Cook Political Report. Not the analysts at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. And certainly not my colleagues at Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, who in a recent column argued that the most likely House result is anything from “a GOP gain of five seats to a Democratic gain of five seats.” (For more on that, watch Nathan’s recent CQ Roll Call video.)

He cites these reasons:

• Trump's unpopularity
• Democratic fundraising advantages
• GOP recruiting failures 

The Trump albatross is getting heavier.

Steven Shepard at Politico:

Nearly seven-in-10 voters say things in the U.S. are pretty seriously on the wrong track, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

Only 31 percent of voters say the country is headed in the right direction, the lowest mark recorded in POLITICO/Morning Consult polling since President Donald Trump took office in early 2017. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed from May 29-June 1 say the country is on the wrong track.

 Grant Smith, Joseph Ax, Chris Kahn at Reuters report on a Reuters/Ipsos poll:

The survey conducted on Monday and Tuesday found 64% of American adults were “sympathetic to people who are out protesting right now,” while 27% said they were not and 9% were unsure.

The poll underscored the political risks for Trump, who has adopted a hardline approach to the protests and threatened to deploy the U.S. military to quell violent dissent. The Republican president faces Democrat Joe Biden in November’s election.

More than 55% of Americans said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the protests, including 40% who “strongly” disapproved, while just one-third said they approved - lower than his overall job approval of 39%, the poll showed.

A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll found that Biden’s lead over Trump among registered voters expanded to 10 percentage points - the biggest margin since the former vice president became his party’s presumptive nominee in early April.

Monmouth:

Most Americans say the anger about black deaths at the hands of police officers that led to recent protests is fully justified, even if they do not feel the same about the actual actions. A majority of the public now agrees that the police are more likely to use excessive force with a black person than a white person in similar situations. Only one-third of the country held this opinion four years ago. The Monmouth (“Mon-muth”) University Poll also finds that the number of people who consider racial and ethnic discrimination to be a big problem has increased from about half in 2015 to nearly 3 in 4 now. In other results, President Donald Trump’s job rating has ticked down again as opinion that the country is headed down the wrong track surpasses 70% for the first time in Monmouth’s polling.