This is the fourth issue of an AEIdeas series that focuses on elections and demographic voting patterns. During the 2022 campaign, we look weekly at demographic subgroup averages from a month of polls.

Our average now includes only polls conducted after Labor Day, the traditional time when voters really start paying attention to the campaign. The Democratic generic ballot lead dropped a point between this snapshot and our last—the largest shift to date. Monmouth, the highest quality live caller poll this week, has Democrats down three points among registered voters. There is certainly a discernable shift towards Republicans—a shift that coincides with increased GOP ad spending and rising unfavorable ratings for many Democratic candidates. Inflation, the economy, and crime continue to beat out abortion as the most important issues to voters, another positive sign for Republicans as they lead in polls on these issues.

Key Findings

• After weeks of steady Democratic gains on the generic ballot, the latest average suggests a tightening race. For the first time since August, the overall Democratic advantage has slipped below two points—still close, but moving in the wrong direction for the Democrats. The most recent Monmouth poll found a three-point Republican lead among registered voters, a 10-point swing from their early August poll.
• Our average continues to show an unusually large gap between white college and white non-college voting intentions. In the Monmouth poll, that gap was exceptionally large: white non-college voters favored the GOP by 30 points, while white college voters preferred the Democrats by 20 points.
• President Biden’s flattening approval rating offers an explanation for recent generic ballot movement. Throughout August, as Biden’s approval rose steadily, Democrats improved on the generic ballot. Since Labor Day, however, Biden’s approval has hovered around 42 percent—a stagnancy mirrored in the Democratic share of the generic ballot.
• Driving the recent movement is the electorate’s focus on crime, inflation, and the economy—all issues that favor Republicans. According to Monmouth, 82 percent of voters think inflation is very or extremely important, while only 56 percent of voters feel similarly about abortion. For an in-depth examination of the politics of abortion this November, see the new AEI American Perspectives Survey, Gender, Generation, and Abortion.
• Abortion is not a particularly important issue for Latinos. Bill McInturff, who helped conduct a recent NBC News/Telemundo poll of Latino voters, found that only 14 percent rank abortion as a “top two” issue, a figure consistent across nearly all Latino subgroups. College-educated Latino women, however, stand out: 23 percent consider abortion a “top two” issue, strengthening narratives of gender and education polarization following the Dobbs decision.
• Our average for Latinos—a 21-point lead for Democrats—is identical to that found by the NBC News/Telemundo poll and reinforces their finding of an election-on-election decline in Democratic support among this group.
• Moderate and conservative Latinos have dramatically shifted to the Republican Party since 2012. According to the NBC News/Telemundo poll, moderate and conservative Latinos preferred Democrats by 49 and nine points, respectively, in 2012. Ten years later, moderate Latinos support Democrats by 32 points, while conservative Latinos support Republicans by 56 points.

Previous election data is drawn from Catalist crosstab estimates. Catalist is a Democratic data analytics organization.

*How we did this: This month-long average is a compilation of online and live caller polls that release crosstabs. Internal and explicitly partisan polls are excluded. This edition averages polls from Monmouth University, Grinnell College/Selzer & Company, Washington Post/ABC News, Economist/YouGov, Quinnipiac University, Morning Consult/Politico, Harvard/Harris, CBS News, Emerson, The Wall Street Journal, Rasmussen, Marquette Law School, Echelon Insights, New York Times/Siena College, and Fox News.

The post Elections and Demography: Signs of a Tightening Race appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.