A video of former President Donald Trump is played during a hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol in the Cannon House Office Building on June 28, 2022: NAJ Screen Shot

By Glynn Wilson –

ANALYSIS – Some important voters were paying attention to the Capitol Attack hearings this summer. And not just Democrats, paying rapt attention to every revelation and detail of Trump’s crimes against the country and the Constitution and sharing the stories on social media. Independent voters were watching too, and according to the latest public opinion numbers, they were moved in the direction of voting for Democrats in the midterms come November 8 because they now believe it has been confirmed that Trump is to blame for the seditious conspiracy and violent insurrection on January 6, 2021.

A Morning Consult/Politico poll finds that 63 percent of independent voters say Trump is at least somewhat responsible for the events that led to the violent riot at the Capitol, up 7 percent from the 56 percent who said that in early June following the select committee’s first prime-time hearing.

The share of independents who now blame Trump for the violence on Jan. 6 is the highest on record, with the next highest share, 60 percent, coming at the height of his second impeachment trial in February 2021.

At the end of this summers public hearings, 87 percent of Democratic Party voters and even 29 percent of Republican voters hold Trump responsible for the upheaval in our democracy on that day.

Repeating the same old saw the mainstream media has been pushing for months, Morning Consult and Politico push the familiar narrative that “Democrats are facing a dismal political environment ahead of the midterms, which are historically a referendum on the party in power.”

“President Joe Biden’s dire approval ratings suggest his party faces a big challenge in campaigning on its record,” they say.

That’s where Trump, the Republican Party’s unpopular standard bearer who is flirting with another presidential campaign launch in the coming months, comes into the picture.

“On the campaign trail, Democrats have already spent millions to help candidates in Republican primaries closely aligned with Trump’s movement in hopes of capitalizing on ill will against the former president,” Politico reports. “And the Jan. 6 committee is preparing to inject itself into the national conversation with more hearings in September, when voters are traditionally more likely to be attuned to the political debate.”

“While the panel’s public work didn’t happen in a vacuum (it came in the same time period that the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that had protected abortion rights nationwide for nearly 50 years), recent data trends suggest the Jan. 6 hearings may have thrown a wrench into Republican efforts to take back the House and Senate this fall,” the pollsters finally agree.

The latest tracking polls show congressional Democrats with their biggest advantage over Republicans on the congressional generic ballot yet, 37 percent to 26 percent, an 11 point advantage.

Democrats held a lead of 8 percentage points over the Republican on average in July, up from a 1-point deficit in June and a 3-point advantage in May.

At the same time, independent voters have absolutely soured on Trump in recent weeks, they show. The latest survey found that only 29 percent of independents hold favorable views of the former president, matching his standing in a survey conducted the weekend after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and down from 38 percent at the end of May.

Democrats’ gains on the generic ballot among independents are out of step with sentiment about Biden, however, whose numbers continue to crater. Since May, Biden’s favorability rating has dropped among independents, and his job approval rating with unaffiliated voters, 27 percent, is worse than it has ever been in 66 surveys conducted since he took office.

“That disconnect suggests independent voters may view November’s contests as less of a referendum and more of a choice between two parties,” they say. “That would benefit Democrats, provided they can define their races on those favorable terms.”

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The latest Morning Consult/Politico survey was conducted July 22-24, 2022, among a representative sample of 2,006 registered U.S. voters, with an unweighted margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

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