Fox News has some very bad news for Fox News.
You’ve probably noticed that Fox pumps out enormous amounts of propaganda designed to smear the Democratic Party as wildly extreme and irredeemably crazy. Leading Fox personalities routinely depict the party as hostage to globalists, transgender rights activists, and violent socialists. Fox figures regularly savage leading Democratic Party figures as traitors.
Fox also perpetually offers a safe space for Donald Trump’s propagandists to smear the Democratic Party as overrun with Communists and worse. On Fox recently, Stephen Miller dissolved into crazed paroxysms as he seethed that the party’s primary ideology is “hatred for America.”
The game here, of course, is not just to drag down Democratic candidates by association. It’s even more fundamental: It’s about getting voters to stop seeing the midterms as a referendum on Trump—to stop getting crazy ideas in their heads about holding Trump accountable for his world-historically disastrous presidency already.
So how’s that going? Well, perhaps these Fox News personalities should take a peek at the most recent polling from—wait for it—Fox News.
An intriguing pattern is developing in Fox’s polling of the Senate races this summer: Just about all the Democratic candidates are significantly outrunning the favorability of their party. While the party’s standing—which is pretty bad—can’t be shrugged off, Fox’s polls do show that most of these Democrats are not getting dragged down by association with the party.
Meanwhile, all these polls show Trump deeply underwater—including in states he won by double digits.
To wit: Fox’s latest poll in Ohio finds Democrat Sherrod Brown leading GOP Senator Jon Husted by eight points, 53 percent to 45 percent. That’s despite the fact that only 42 percent view the Democratic Party favorably. The rub is that only 44 percent see Brown as too close to the Democratic “establishment,” while 55 percent do not. Turns out a lot of voters who don’t like the party support Brown.
This applies across other races. Fox’s newish poll of Texas finds Democrat James Talarico leading Republican Ken Paxton 51–48, even though the Democratic Party is upside down at 45–54. The new Fox poll of Maine finds Democrat Troy Jackson slightly ahead of GOP Senator Susan Collins 48–46, even though the party is underwater at 44–54. That’s too close for comfort for Jackson, perhaps reflecting his recent entry into the race, but it’s promising.
Meanwhile, earlier this summer, Fox’s poll of North Carolina found former Governor Roy Cooper leading GOPer Michael Whatley 53–44, even though the Democratic Party is polling 43–56. And Fox’s survey of Iowa finds Democrat Josh Turek leading GOP Representative Ashley Hinson 50–46. This poll didn’t test the Democratic Party’s favorability rating, but it did find that only 36 percent of Iowa voters view Turek as “too liberal,” while 60 percent do not.
There’s one exception here: Michigan. Fox’s new survey finds Democrat Abdul El-Sayed trailing GOPer Mike Rogers by 47–51. El-Sayed is outrunning his party (which polls at 43–56), but not by enough. Perhaps it’s that he hasn’t consolidated the base yet (he only wins 75 percent of Black voters), or that his positions are seen as too extreme (54 percent say this), or that he hasn’t reached working people yet (he trails among them by 10 points). But there’s a lot of work to do.
Admittedly, Fox is only one pollster, many other factors will decide these races, and control of the upper chamber is on a knife’s edge. But it’s worth planting a flag on this pattern—Democratic candidates achieving some separation from the party—because it will be a crucial factor. Democratic strategists often say many of these candidates have their own strong identities in their states, and that this will matter more than the party’s overall standing, even in red places. For now, at least, this appears to be holding.
One last thing is worth noting about these polls: Trump’s net favorability ratings are deeply underwater. They’re upside down in Ohio (-14), in Texas (-9), in Iowa (-13), and in North Carolina (-19). In several of these he’s at least 50 points underwater with independents. Trump won all those states—and he won all but the last by double digits.
So here’s a crazy idea: Maybe—just maybe—Trump is a bigger problem for the Republican candidates than the Democratic Party is for the Democratic ones. Note, for instance, that in Maine, 55 percent say Collins votes with Trump too often.
Of course, obscuring such unpleasant realities is one of Fox News’s most critical missions. As Matt Gertz of Media Matters often points out, Fox regularly shields its own viewers from Fox’s own poll findings. Indeed, Trump himself often rages at Fox to fire its pollsters when Fox delivers findings that displease him.
In that sense, Trump and Fox both share a deep understanding about how Trump’s mystique with MAGA really functions: Even mere perceptions that Trump is politically weak or falling short in any way risk fracturing the base.
It’s taken as a truism in American punditry that the supposed impregnability of this base is why Trump has an allegedly unmovable floor. But many of these polls show this base cracking pretty badly as he underperforms with non-college whites and even with rural voters to boot. Fox personalities: If you don’t like hearing all this, well, go take it up with your own network’s pollsters.
