Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* With only a week remaining in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, Quinnipiac’s latest poll shows Ralph Northam (D) up big over Ed Gillespie (R), 53% to 36%. No other recent polling shows Northam with an advantage anywhere close to this.
* The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found Donald Trump’s approval rating slipping to 38% — an all-time low in this poll — while Democrats now enjoy a seven-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, 48% to 41%.
* And in still more polling news, Gallup’s daily tracking poll from yesterday found the president’s approval rating down to just 33%, also a new low. Most modern presidents never reached a level of support this low, and before Trump, no president in the polling era ever dropped to 33% after just nine months in office.
* Trump’s re-election campaign unveiled a new 30-second television ad this morning, attacking the “radical left,” and demanding that Democrats stop “obstructing” and start “working with our president.” In reality, congressional Dems have been blocked from participating in most major policy talks this year.
* The latest statewide poll in Nevada pointed to trouble for Sen. Dean Heller (R): JMC Analytics found him trailing his primary rival, Las Vegas businessman Danny Tarkanian, 44% to 38%. * In Arizona, Rep. Martha McSally (R) is apparently interested in running for retiring Sen. Jeff Flake’s (R) seat, but the far-right Club for Growth has already pledged to oppose McSally, deeming her insufficiently conservative. * Despite the Republican majority in the Senate, the DSCC has outraised the NRSC in September. It’s the sixth straight month in which this has happened. * And asked late Friday about whether he might launch a presidential campaign in 2020, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a GOP critic of Trump, was non-committal. “You know, I don’t know what I’m doing next Sunday,” the senator told reporters.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
