Tea leaf of the day

I’ve been looking for tea leaves to read in connection with the midterm elections next week. The Twitter feed of Interactive Polls links to the Wall Street Journal poll reported here in today’s paper. (The tweet links to an accessible version of the story here.)

The poll was conducted by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio and Democratic pollster John Anzalone. I trust that when commissioned by the Wall Street Journal, they take their partisan hats off or that the combination of the two does it for them.

The tweet highlights this tea leaf: “The GOP has seen a shift in its favor among several voter groups, including Latino voters and women, and particularly white suburban women. That group, which the pollsters said makes up 20% of the electorate, shifted 26 percentage points away from Democrats since the Journal’s August poll and now favors the GOP by 15 percentage points.”

The Journal story quotes Anzalone:

Mr. Anzalone said the most concerning matter for Democrats is that independent voters don’t trust the party to handle rising prices. Whichever party is in power, he said, finds that independent voters “break against the party when you have economic diagnostics like we’re seeing. End of story, done.” He added, “Voters trust the Republicans on that, right now. That’s tough sledding for us.”

Interesting if true. Michael Ramirez summed it up in one eloquent picture yesterday. I always expect the worst and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

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