Public Still Favors Democrats Over Republicans Now

There is a lot of talk about a wave election in 2018 -- an election that would flip control of one or both houses of Congress to the Democrats. This poll doesn't do anything to discourage that view.

When asked which party they would vote for (if the election was today), poll respondents gave Democrats a 7 point advantage (44% to 37%). When blame is assessed for the current dysfunctional Congress, 53% blame the Republicans and only 8% blame the Democrats. When the 34% that blame both parties are figured in, it comes out to 87% blaming Republicans and 42% blaming Democrats -- a huge 45 point margin.

The other two charts also show Democrats with an advantage. Democrats in Congress have a 10 point margin in favorability over Republicans. And the Democratic Party has a 6 point margin in favorability over the Republican Party.While the public is not enamored with either major party, they seem to prefer the Democrats over the Republicans.

But perhaps the biggest advantage the Democrats have is the public's dislike of Donald Trump and their disapproval of the job he is doing. He is the most unpopular president since World War II by a huge margin, and his job approval numbers have been upside-down for many months now. I think the public would like to see Democrats controlling Congress because they could block the most egregious mistakes of Trump.

The charts above contain information in the new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done on January 8th and 9th of a random national sample of 1,500 adults, with a 3.3 point margin of error.