McLaughlin often puts out R-pipedream polls but this isn't it. Biden's approval is -9 (roughly alongside average of mainstream polls) and what's really weird to me is the GCB is only R+1. Trump is actually doing better in a hypothetical presidential contest than congressional Republicans for the midterms.
It seems like Democrats overperform on the generic ballot question the year before midterms when there is an incumbent D President - we saw this dynamic in 2013 and 2009.
They do. And every single one of these polls I've looked into always has Independents disapproving of Biden by 15-25 points yet they're going like a measely +5 for Republicans with 20% undecided. It doesn't take some grand wisdom to predict where they'll go in the end. I think who they are as a group are people who voted for Biden but are disillusioned with the current state of the country and the Dem Party, but still have reservations about the Republican Party. I think there's going to be a lot of first-time R voters in '22 that'll show up again in '24, much like the college ed whites voted D by large margins in '18 and roughly maintained that for '20.
