Whether it’s a wave or just a steady flow of voter sentiment, a new national tracking poll continues to forecast a rising tide for Democrats in their quest to reclaim control of the House.
The survey is the first of three weekly tracking polls of voter sentiment that USC and The Times plan to release between now and election day.
It’s not hard to find what’s driving much of that sentiment: strong feelings about President Trump. The desire to vote against him runs especially strong among female voters, particularly college-educated white women and minority women. That’s created new battlegrounds in suburban districts that once reliably voted Republican, from Orange County to northern New Jersey.
A slight majority of likely female voters in the USC/L.A. Times poll, 51%, said they saw their vote as an expression of opposition to Trump, compared with 24% who said it would express support for Trump and 25% who said neither. Men divided almost evenly on that question, with 38% in opposition, 36% in support and 26% saying neither.
— Republican Reps. Mimi Walters and Steve Knight are staunch allies of the president. But only Walters is getting hit on it in Democratic attack ads. Elsewhere, most are largely avoiding the topic of the president in a surge of television advertising in the final weeks of California’s most competitive campaigns.
— With a quartet of…
