Democrats Hold 9-Point Advantage for Midterms in NBC/WSJ Poll

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s approval rating is on the rise, but Democrats hold a sizable advantage going into November’s mid-term elections when people likely to vote are asked which party they want to control Congress.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday showed Democrats with an 9-point edge among likely voters, 50 percent to the 41 percent who want Republicans to stay in charge. The lead is powered by support from women, Latinos and younger voters, the poll found. Among a wider pool of registered voters, the Democrats’ lead was a smaller 7 points.

A key finding ahead of the mid-term elections, which are often marked by low voter turnout, is that Americans are more fired up than usual. The 65 percent of registered voters reporting high interest in the election was the highest in 12 years. The figure among Democrats was 72 percent, and among Republicans it was 68 percent.

“It’s a barnburner,” Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey along with Democratic pollster Fred Yang and Hart Research Associates.

Trump’s approval rating, at 47 percent, was his highest yet in the NBC/WSJ polling series. The poll showed Republicans had a 15-point advantage on the question of which party better deals with the economy, their biggest lead on that question in the poll’s history.

But the poll found that Democrats led among all women at 57 percent to 32 percent, among Latinos at 66 percent to 26 percent, and those ages 18 to 34 at 58 percent to 32 percent, the poll found.

With early voting under way in some contests, Trump warned in a tweet late Saturday that “all levels of government and law enforcement” are watching carefully for voter fraud, and “violators will be subject to maximum penalties, both civil and criminal!”

The president has previously claimed widespread voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election, including by undocumented immigrants who aren’t eligible to cast votes.

The NBC/WSJ survey of 900 registered voters was conducted Oct. 14-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. Among 645 likely voters, the margin of error expanded to plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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