The Two Reasons Democrats Can’t Pull Away In An Off-Year Election

Poll numbers suggest that many Americans are unhappy with the economy and have concerns about our foreign policy.

So why are Democrats in Congress unable to pull away from Republicans?

Remember, it is an off-year election. Every off-year election favors the party out of power. But Harry Enten of CNN pointed out that right now, the question of whether Democrats even win back the House — which they clearly should — is up for grabs.

Enten said that in order for Democrats to win the House despite redistricting, they need to win the national popular vote by three or four points. CNN’s current poll shows them with a three-point advantage. If this becomes the actual result come Election Day, the race for the House would basically be a toss-up.

The new CNN poll should serve as a big time reality check for Dems.

Yes, Trump isn’t liked on the economy… but neither are the Dems.

Dems’ lead on the generic House ballot isn’t growing.

With redistricting, the race for House control is well within the margin of error. pic.twitter.com/ewJ6w1W1AT

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) May 12, 2026

That is why the redistricting efforts underway are so important, because before redistricting, Democrats essentially needed only to win the national House popular vote in order to win control of the House of Representatives. But now, with redistricting, a three-point win may not do it.

So the question is: Why are Democrats only leading by three points? Republicans are in control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, and the president is at roughly 40% approval. Why are Democrats unable to pull away?

The answer is fairly obvious. The state of the economy is always temporary, but socialism and support for terrorism are forever.

The Democratic Party moves ever further to the Left. A brand-new poll from AtlasIntel is out, and it shows, for the first time, that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is surging to first place in the Democratic presidential primary poll.

It is astonishing that the idiot congresswoman from New York, who has achieved zero in Congress, whose entire persona is being the lady who says “like” a lot, and doesn’t understand basic economics while weeping over the funding of Iron Dome in Israel, is currently leading the first 2028 poll.

According to the poll, right now, she leads with 26% of the Democratic primary base; Pete Buttigieg clocks in second at 22%, Gavin Newsom at 21%, Kamala Harris at 13%, with everyone else far behind.

There are a few headlines there. One: Kamala Harris is falling off pretty quickly. It’s unclear whether she’s even going to make it to the starting gate. Two: Pete Buttigieg overperforms in this particular poll. (It must have oversampled white liberal ladies.)

I’ve been saying for a while that I think people have been selling Ocasio-Cortez’s stock too low. The Democrats are aiming for the far-Left — and they are hitting it.

You can see that everything that used to be a bug for Democrats is now a feature. Being too radical for the crowd is now a feature. Look at Graham Platner in Maine, the guy with the SS tattoo. That guy. That’s a feature.

Zohran Mamdani being pro-terrorist? That’s a feature.

Moreover, the Democratic senatorial nominee in Michigan will likely be Abdul El-Sayed, which is insane. The fact that Abdul Mohammad El-Sayed may be the Democratic nominee in Michigan demonstrates how far the Left has moved. They’re now openly embracing people who favor terrorism, who lean into it. Remember, El-Sayed was caught on tape saying he would not condemn those who were in favor of Ayatollah Khomeini. This is a person who has expressed support for terrorist groups. That is a feature, not a bug, in the modern Democratic Party. That made him do better.

Jon Favreau, over at the Pod Save America crew, a person who spends his days trying to legitimize radicals, responded to new polling showing El-Sayed with a nine-point lead in the primary, calling it a “third-way bump.” And then Ben Rhodes came back — the foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama whose literal nickname in the White House was “Hamas” (that’s not a joke) — and jumped in to say, “You mean voters don’t take direction from Washington think tanks and Wall Street Journal op-eds?”

There are a lot of problems with El-Sayed, including, according to Politico, the fact that he calls himself a physician even though he has never been granted a medical license. So that’s awkward.

But the real drawback is that he is pretty much in love with radical Islamic terrorism and campaigns with people who are also pretty much in love with radical Islamic terrorism.

In the end, Americans don’t like this stuff very much. When Americans see video from Brooklyn of girls getting punched in the head by Hamas supporters, they don’t like it all that much.

Mamdani, as mayor of New York, has allowed radical pro-Hamas and Hezbollah rallies to blossom in the center of the city and the suburbs. There is a video that emerged a couple of days ago of pro-Hamas marchers going to houses in the middle of Brooklyn to protest, and one Jewish girl got punched in the face by one of these protesters.

People literally assaulting Jews in the neighborhood for being Jewish is apparently just fine with Democrats; Mamdani has said the right to protest is sacrosanct, which is why he allowed this sort of thing in the first place.

Socialism and support for terrorism. Most Americans hate all of it.

But the Democrats won’t give it up.