Democrats have posted a “shocking” improvement in the polls that could lead to resounding victories in next year’s midterm elections, according to CNN’s top data analyst.
The network’s chief data guru, Harry Enten, expressed surprise at the significant jump in Democrats’ standing in Gallup’s latest party identification results, which now show the party holding a 7-point advantage over the GOP.
“It was shocking to me,” Enten said of the party affiliation results. “And traditionally speaking, this is a metric that has been quite telling of elections.”
Gallup’s party ID polling asks voters to self-report whether they consider themselves Republicans or Democrats. The third-quarter data found that 48 percent now consider themselves Democrats, compared with 41 percent who identify as Republicans.
In the previous quarter, there was only a 3-point difference between those who identified as Democrats (46 percent) or Republicans (43 percent), with the two parties tied at 45 percent each in the first quarter of 2025.
“Last year, going into the 2024 presidential election, that was the rare time in which Republicans actually held a lead in Gallup’s party ID measure,” Enten said. “That Republican lead is no more. Adios amigos, eliminated.”
Historically, the ruling party tends to suffer major losses in the midterms, with the GOP already facing an uphill battle to retain control of the House due to its razor-thin majority.
Enten noted that during the same period leading up to the 2018 midterms, when Democrats went on to achieve a net gain of 41 seats in the House, the party had just a 4-point lead in Gallup’s party ID poll.
The results just over a year before the 2022 midterms, when the GOP failed to deliver the predicted “red wave,” showed Democrats ahead by only one point.
“They’re actually doing better at this point than they were doing during the 2018 cycle,” Enten said. “At this particular point, what you’re seeing is Democrats doing considerably, considerably better than they did back in the 2022 midterm cycle. And more than that, Democrats have been gaining throughout this year compared to what we saw back in 2021.
“If this seven-point lead holds through next year and averages out in 2026—Democrats plus seven—there is no historical precedent for Republicans actually gaining in the House. Democrats gain in every year,” Enten added. “That looks like what Gallup shows right now.”
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