by Curtis Houck
Monday’s CBS Mornings furthered the liberal media-wide narrative that their friends in elected office still have a chance to win the midterm elections as, thanks to the latest CBS News Battleground Tracker, CBS’s experts believe Republicans will only come away with an eight-seat advantage in the House tanks to the supposed popularity of expanding abortion.
Fill-in co-host John Dickerson teased of the poll showing “how the President’s big moves lately could affect the midterm elections” while co-host Tony Dokoupil boasted in the lead-in that “there has been a recent shift on where the voters stand on some key issues, including how the President is handling the economy.”
CBS News elections and survey correspondent Anthony Salvanto delivered the supposed good news:Back in July, John, after talking to voters in all these congressional districts, we were seeing Republicans with a lead to take control of the House. You need 218. They were at 230. But in our latest estimate, again talking to voters in all these districts, Republicans go down to 226, so a little bit of momentum for the Democrats back the other way.
Dickerson followed up by tying the margin to abortion: “[L]ast week, we had primary races and a special election, which abortion favor — was a very important issue. Is that coming up in what you’re seeing?”
Salvanto explained that not only had “Democrats overperformed their numbers from the past,” but “[l]ikely voters are more likely to say they’re going to the polls to support abortion rights then to oppose them and that is occurrent to the Democrats.”
“Democrats are making some gains among key groups, including among women voters — including among women voters, they have risen in support with — including white women with college degrees, up from 45 to 54,” he added.
However, he neglected to mention that, just below the 41 percent of voters saying they were going to the ballot box to support abortion and 16 percent to oppose abortion, 43 percent said their vote wasn’t about abortion.
Therefore, a combined 69 percent of voters will cast their ballots either to support life or with other issue(s) on their mind.
The pair nonetheless kept up the focus on abortion before pivoting to Republicans:DICKERSON: So, it’s not only — it’s a motivating issue for them. It’s not just they’re — they have an opinion about abortion. It’s actually changing the way they believe about this election.
SALVANTO: Democrats now say it’s the most important thing.
DICKERSON: Now, let’s talk about the Republicans. Since you and I last talked, Donald Trump has had a visit from the FBI to Mar-a-Lago. How is that showing up in your numbers?
SALVANTO: Yeah. There’s a couple of things here. One is that Republicans say they want the party to support Donald Trump on this. That’s important politically because it, A, motivates their base to turn out, but, B, puts pressure on those party leaders not to criticize him, right?
(….)
SALVANTO: [F]or the rest of the electorate, Donald Trump is a net negative and, if you look at where he’s a factor, and — by the way — he is a factor for most people, which is unusual for a midterms — it’s a former President, right — but there’s more people out there to oppose him than support him, so this is Republicans being motivated, but for independents and Democrats, it’s against him.
The pair closed by promoting Biden’s approval number inching up and voters feeling better about the state of the economy by five points to 31 percent.