A new Rasmussen Reports national survey has some bad news for politicians trying to get re-elected this November: 63 percent of likely voters say they are “at least somewhat likely to vote for someone other than an incumbent.
According to Rasmussen, a national telephone and online survey released Tuesday shows that of the 63 percent who may vote for a challenger this fall, 34 percent say they are “very likely” to do so. Meanwhile, 18 percent say they’re sticking with the incumbent and the remaining 18 percent are still not decided.
“These findings are similar to 2018, when 65% were at least somewhat likely to vote against the incumbent,” Rasmussen said.
There’s even more bad news buried in Rasmussen’s report. Fifty-five percent of voters say they would “vote to get rid of the entire Congress and start over again.” That number has hardly changed since the 2018 mid-terms, “but down from an all-time high of 78% in 2013.”Twenty-two percent (22%) now would not vote to dump the entire Congress, and another 22% are not sure, the polling firm revealed.
Of course, as the November election draws closer, sentiments may change. November is more than four months away, and in politics, that can be an eternity because a lot can happen to change voters’ minds.
The survey of 1,062 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on June 8-10. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Breaking things down categorically, Rasmussen says the anti-incumbent mood reflected in this survey “cuts across the usual partisan divisions.”
Sixty-eight percent of Democrats, 67 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Independent voters “say they’re at least somewhat likely to vote for someone other than an incumbent in November.” However, the report noted, fewer Republicans (45%) than Democrats (57%) or Independents (65%) would vote to get rid of the entire Congress and start over again, if they could.
“More men (58%) than women voters (53%) would vote to dump the entire Congress,” Rasmussen reported.
Voters under 30 are most likely to say they’ll vote against incumbents this fall, but those ages 40 to 64 are most likely to say they’d vote to get rid of the entire Congress and start over again, if that was an option.
