Trump Is Deep Underwater in Fox Polls

Fox News has bad news for Fox News. Day after day, the network paints a picture of a Democratic Party that is supposed to look completely detached from reality and hopelessly confused, and now its own polling operation is burying that picture. A network that paints reality for its viewers keeps a measuring device around that measures reality anyway. The painted world holds up only as long as nobody counts, and inside the very same building, somebody is counting.

The slant is well known. Leading hosts portray the party as being held hostage by globalists and violent socialists, and its representatives are regularly called traitors. On top of that, the network gives Donald Trump's surrogates a safe space to smear the same party as if it had been overrun by Communists and worse. The whole machine is designed to make one of America's two major parties look like it has lost its mind. Stephen Miller recently worked himself into a furious fit and declared that the Democrats' main ideology was hatred of America.

The purpose goes beyond dragging down individual candidates. Voters are not supposed to see the midterms as a referendum on Trump, and they certainly are not supposed to get the idea that he should be held accountable for an already historically disastrous term in office. Every weak record knows this old trick: redirect the question as long as you cannot win on the answer. A term in office can only escape judgment if you separate the vote from the person it is really about. That is the plan, and the numbers coming out of the same network are refusing to play along.

The whole difference between a party and a candidate is the difference between a word and a face. A party stays distant enough for every insult to stick to it, while a name on the ballot belongs to a person voters think they know. That is exactly where this summer's races are playing out, and the network's propaganda is not reaching across that gap. A label can be smeared from a distance; a candidate with a name and a record is harder to hit.

In this summer's Senate polling, nearly all Democratic candidates are performing significantly better than their party. The gap is so consistent that it cannot be dismissed as a fluke in a few individual races. The party's bad reputation is still there, but it is not dragging most of these candidates down with it. At the same time, Trump is deeply underwater almost everywhere, even in states he won by double digits.

Ohio shows it perfectly. Democrat Sherrod Brown is 8 points ahead of Republican Senator Jon Husted, 53 to 45 percent, even though only 42 percent view the Democratic Party favorably. A second number matters just as much. Only 44 percent think Brown is too closely tied to the party establishment, while 55 percent do not. A lot of people who dislike the party are voting for its candidate anyway, and that separation is exactly what the network cannot talk away.

The same thing is happening elsewhere. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico leads Republican Ken Paxton 51 to 48 percent, while the party itself sits at 45 to 54 percent. In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson is narrowly ahead of Republican Senator Susan Collins, 48 to 46 percent, even though the party itself stands at only 44 to 54 percent. That is still too close for Jackson, especially because he got into the race late, but it gets your attention.

Earlier this summer, a poll in North Carolina had former Governor Roy Cooper leading Republican Michael Whatley 53 to 44 percent, while the party there stood at only 43 to 56 percent. In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek leads Republican Representative Ashley Hinson 50 to 46 percent. The party's favorability was not tested there, but only 36 percent think Turek is too liberal, while 60 percent do not.

There is one exception that clouds the picture, and its name is Michigan. Democrat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed trails Republican Mike Rogers there, 47 to 51 percent. He too is doing better than his party, which stands at 43 to 56 percent, just not by enough. Maybe he has not locked down his own base yet, because only 75 percent of Black voters are behind him. Maybe his positions are seen as too far out, which 54 percent say they are. Among working people, he trails by 10 points, and there is still a lot of work to do there. His job is to turn a lead over his party into a lead over his opponent.

The second picture in these polls is Trump himself. His net rating is minus 14 in Ohio and minus 9 in Texas. In Iowa, he stands at minus 13, and in North Carolina at minus 19. Among independent voters, he is down by at least 50 points in several of these states, a gap no good week is going to erase. He won every one of them, all but North Carolina by double digits, and today he would not have a majority behind him in any of them. Maybe, just maybe, Trump has become a bigger burden for Republicans than the Democratic Party is for its own candidates. The equation the network has been selling for months has been turned on its head. In Maine, 55 percent say Susan Collins votes with him too often.

One of the network's most important jobs is making unpleasant facts like these disappear. Media watchdogs regularly point out that it even shields its own viewers from the results of its own polls. Trump, meanwhile, loudly demands that the pollsters be fired whenever he does not like their numbers. Both understand exactly how his pull inside the MAGA movement works. Even the mere suspicion that he might be weak or failing somewhere can shake his supporters.

There is something almost self-forgetting about the whole thing. A network invents a reality for its viewers and then has to protect them from its own measurements so the invention can survive. The audience is deceived and at the same time protected from the truth as if the truth itself were an outrage.

In American politics, the supposed unshakability of this base is treated almost like a law of nature that guarantees Trump a fixed floor. But the numbers show serious cracks. He is losing ground even among white voters without college degrees and among rural voters, exactly where his footing was supposed to be strongest. A floor that holds only as long as nobody tests it barely deserves the name. The network is still just one pollster, many other forces will decide these races, and control of the Senate is on a knife's edge. Democratic strategists have long said that many of their candidates have their own strong standing in their states, one that matters more even in Republican-leaning areas than the condition of the party itself, and that this year the numbers are finally backing that up. The network's hosts are left with one simple piece of advice. If they do not like any of this, they should take it up with their own pollsters.