Well, Here Is This:
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Why Democrats are suddenly winning back the left — and the “double-haters”
Plus, the share of Americans calling themselves Republicans just hit a decade low. Your weekly political data roundup for April 5, 2026.
Leading off: Very liberal Americans, who have rated the Democratic Party poorly relative to other partisans since 2024, have swung sharply back toward congressional Democrats over the last few months. A new poll also finds voters who dislike both parties now prefer Democrats by 31 points. These gains should reassure a party that has faced internal strife since Trump’s second term began, but look less due to renewed faith in the Democrats and more like anti-Trump consolidation. That might not matter for the midterms — a vote won is a vote won — but it will matter for 2028 and beyond.
On deck this week: Tuesday’s Deep Dive will cover some new research on the level of ideological thinking in the electorate and the value (or not) of ideological moderation by the Democrats, and Friday’s Chart of the Week will respond to whatever’s in the news. I’m also finalizing questions for our April Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll this week — so subscribers, send in your question recommendations if you haven’t already! (Email or comments are fine.)
On with the data.
1. Anti-Trump sentiment, not pro-Democratic enthusiasm, is uniting Democrats again
A new YouGov/The Economist poll, fielded from March 27 – 30, finds that Democratic voters have grown significantly warmer toward their members of Congress over the last few months. Earlier in 2026, Democrats said their party’s MOCs were favorable at a rate just 30 points higher than the rate they said their party was unfavorable. That gap has now grown to +55 — rivaling the favorability of Republican MOCs among Republican voters.
Aggregate Democratic views have increased because very liberal Americans have become sharply more favorable toward congressional Democrats since January. This group evaluated the party’s members of Congress favorably by a net +28 points margin — up from a -13 deficit in January. That’s a 41-point shift in two months:
Among Americans who are liberal but not very liberal, moderate, or conservative (basically everyone else), views of congressional Democrats barely budged.
Overall, U.S. adults give the Democrats a favorability rating of -21, 5 points higher than the rating they currently give Republicans.
That is a meaningful change. Last summer, Strength In Numbers documented that Democratic party favorability was unusually weak even as the party remained competitive on the generic ballot. We dug into the survey microdata and found out that this was because many left-leaning Americans were frustrated with their own side after the 2024 loss. Charles Franklin, who conducts the Marquette University Law School Poll, has been tracking the same dynamic in both national and Wisconsin polling. Among Democratic identifiers in Wisconsin, his data shows a net +56 favorability rating for their party, compared to +74 among Republican identifiers for the GOP.
Franklin finds that while Democrats still disagree about what they’re for, they are virtually unanimous in what they’re against: Donald Trump.
The simplest explanation for Democrats’ gains is that politically active party members on the left — who have had a lot of complaints about how the party is handling Trump 2.0 — are now responding to the same thing many other Americans are right now. That is, the president has moved public policy on many issue domains far to the right and up on the authoritarian axis (certainly far past the policy temperature “set point,” to use the language of the thermostatic model), and progressives are setting their differences with the Democrats aside for the moment as they focus on defeating an increasingly unpopular Republican president. This looks more like anti-Trump unity than pro-Democratic enthusiasm.
But it’s not just the base
The Democrats’ consolidation of left-wing liberalism is one piece of a broader backlash to Trumpism that shows up in the polling data right now. Another notable finding this week is from a new CNN/SSRS survey that found that about one-quarter of the public holds an unfavorable view of both parties. These are the so-called “double haters.” This group prefers Democrats on the 2025 generic ballot by 31 points.
This is a big deal for two reasons. First, that’s a massive shift; Double haters broke for Trump in 2016 and again in 2024. Now they’re swinging hard the other way.
Like Franklin’s polling, the CNN report also finds that Democrats’ gains are driven largely by opposition to the GOP, not enthusiasm for Democrats themselves. When asked what they dislike about Democrats, 22% of double haters called the party “do-nothing” and 11% said they aren’t standing up enough to Trump and the GOP, while 10% said they’re too liberal.
Will 2026 be a Democratic fake out?
So we’ve got two layers of anti-Trump consolidation happening at once. YouGov’s data shows the Democratic left is coming home, and the CNN poll shows voters who dislike both parties — a swing group that has been decisive in recent elections — are breaking heavily toward Democrats for the first time in years. Neither group is necessarily enthusiastic about Democrats. But both are currently heavily voting against Republicans. According to the CNN poll, 79% of voters who plan to support Democrats say their vote is a message of opposition to Trump. (Only 46% of Republican voters say they’ll vote to show support for the president.)
This could make for a big electoral win for Democrats in November, despite the division in the party and its overall nominally unpopular rating. According to CNN, Democratic-aligned voters are 17 points more likely than Republicans to call themselves “extremely motivated” to vote in 2026 — even though they’re 14 points less likely to view their own party favorably. Meanwhile, the Democrats have opened up a large lead in the U.S. House generic congressional ballot for 2026. They are up +6 in both the CNN and YouGov surveys, and closer to +5 on average.
This is the pattern I’d expect in a midterm environment that favors the out-party. But with many Americans (including the vaunted “double-haters”) still viewing the Democrats as weak and ineffectual, a big electoral victory will not completely solve their deeper problems of identity and division.
The trend in this data is good for the Democrats, in other words — but don’t misread a positive trend for a positive level.
2. What Strength In Numbers published last week
Readers of Strength In Numbers got three articles last week — a lighter load, since I was out sick Monday and Tuesday.
This week’s Deep Dive asked a question I’ve been getting a lot lately: if Trump is 20+ points underwater, why aren’t Democrats leading the generic ballot by 20?
Trump is 20+ points underwater. So why aren’t Democrats up 20 for the midterms?
G. Elliott Morris Apr 1
On Thursday, David and I recorded our weekly podcast about Trump’s record-low polling numbers on Iran and the economy:
(snip-a bit More, go see it)
REUTERS: Iran says peace talks would be “unreasonable” following Israeli strikes in Lebanon
Iran says peace talks would be “unreasonable” following Israeli strikes in Lebanon
Israel pounded Lebanon with its heaviest strikes yet on Wednesday, killing hundreds of people and drawing a threat of retaliation from Iran, which suggested it would be “unreasonable” to proceed with talks to forge a permanent peace deal with the United States.
Read in Reuters: https://apple.news/AKa4EM5RHQZSnWQmITMMeQQ
Shared from Apple News
Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie
Olympic Athletes Rapinoe and Bird Slam IOC Trans Ban: “I’m Sickened By It”
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/olympic-athletes-rapinoe-and-bird
“It’s just a total acquiescence to the Trump Administration,” Rapinoe said.
In the latest episode of their podcast A Touch More, all-star athletes Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird denounced the International Olympic Committee’s new rule requiring sex testing for athletes competing in the women’s category.
The anti-trans policy will subject athletes competing in the women’s division—and only women’s, not men’s—to invasive sex testing to determine whether they have an SRY gene. Why this is where the International Olympic Committee chose to draw the gender line is arguably arbitrary.
No major medical organization endorses this litmus test as a reliable marker of athletic skill or “biological sex.” Even the scientist who discovered the SRY gene has slammed this practice in sports, saying “science does not support” this “overly simplistic” approach. Rather, it’s an arbitrary line in the sand used to cram unscientific ideas about gender and sex into manmade, binary boundaries.
Nonetheless, if a woman tests positive for the gene, she could be forced to compete in the “male” category. This has had dire consequences the last few times it was deployed against women’s athletes. From 1992 to 1999, cisgender women were forced into testing and found out, on the world stage, that they had intersex conditions they never knew about. The spectacle led to ostracization, disqualification, and at least one suicide before such testing was abolished.
“What we’re doing is subjecting everybody, all women and all people who are identifying as women, to this really invasive testing that only to me just says like, oh, so we’re just trying to whittle it down to a certain type of woman,” Rapinoe said.
Rapinoe is one of the most high-profile athletes in the country, a soccer player with three Olympic competitions under her belt and a decorated career in the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT). Bird, meanwhile, is among the most successful athletes in history—the retired WNBA legend spent her 20-season professional career as a point guard for the Seattle Storm, and is a record-breaking Olympian in her own right. The athletic power couple has been engaged since 2020. Together, they’ve long been outspoken advocates for the LGBTQ community.
Rapinoe connected the anti-trans vitriol in sports to the right wing’s broader attacks on queer and trans people, calling the push for sex testing “hateful.”
“They sort of like, lost the battle on gay marriage,” Rapinoe said. “So, it’s just like, we’re going to have this whole campaign for all these years to just hate trans people, which is such a small percentage of the population.”
Countless women, cisgender and transgender alike, have faced harassment and persecution because of the anti-trans athlete witch hunt.
“It’s just a total acquiescence to the Trump Administration,” Rapinoe said. “It’s just horrible, and I’m just sickened by it.”
The IOC rule is part of a broader pattern. In the United States, sports bans have served as a Trojan Horse for more sweeping anti-trans policies. The DOJ’s recent lawsuit over “women’s sports,” for example, also demands that transgender students be banned from bathrooms and locker rooms.
“Can we please stop obsessing over trans people and, I don’t know, maybe focus our time, energy, and resources into real problems women’s sports face?” Bird chimed in. She rejected the idea that sex testing, as the IOC claims, “protects women,” instead calling it a “fear-mongering” political ploy meant to generate support from conservative voters.
“That’s all this is,” Bird said. “If you crack this door open, it gets blown open. You’re now policing women’s bodies across the board.”
Well, It’s True.
Funny, some, but true. I enjoy reading at McSweeney’s, and I don’t do it often enough.
Final Exam for the Class “What a Presidential Candidate Can and Cannot Survive, Apparently” Taught
by Howard Dean
by Tom Ellison and Nick Morgan
Final Exam
Poli Sci 401
Yale University,
Jackson School of Global Affairs
Professor Howard Dean
Part I (50 points) – multiple choice
1. Which of these public utterances would immediately end a candidate’s presidential ambitions?
B. “If [she] weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
C. “YEEEAAAAAWW!!!”
2. Each of the following moves would consolidate a candidate’s base, except:
A. Expressing agreement with the great replacement theory
B. Expressing solidarity with the Proud Boys and January 6 insurrectionists
C. Expressing enthusiasm, which was a big no-no in 2004 Iowa, apparently
3. Which violation of American values would cause the electorate to doubt the candidate’s fitness for the presidency?
A. Violating the human rights of families by tearing children away from their parents at the border
B. Violating the bodies of twenty-six women
C. Violating the unspoken decibel limit on cheering at an event meant for cheering, which is definitely a good rule that applies equally to everyone
4. If exposed to the public, which revelations would instantly decimate campaign fundraising?
A. The candidate being caught with boxes full of state secrets next to their toilet
B. The candidate being caught sleeping with a porn star just after his wife had a baby
C. The candidate being caught up in a moment, just a fleeting moment, which at the time seemed normal, not the end of everything the candidate had ever worked for since the candidate was twelve
5. Which of the following statements warrants being aired 633 times by national news outlets in a span of four days?
A. “They’re poisoning the blood of our country.”
B. “Laziness is a trait in Blacks.”
C. “YEEEAAAAAWW!!!”
6. Which of the following audio recordings would be so damaging that it becomes a years-long political meme and defines the candidate for the rest of their life?
A. A recording where the candidate extorts Ukraine for election assistance
B. A recording where the candidate brags about grabbing women “by the pussy”
C. A recording where the mics picked up the candidate but not the roar of the crowd, which, if you were there, was really loud and made screaming much more normal in context, actually
7. Which action would cause an immediate, double-digit drop in the polls?
A. Starting a movement to hang the vice president
B. Starting a coup d’etat attempt against the United States of America
C. Starting to say “yee-haw” because it felt so right after rattling off the upcoming state primaries, but then realizing halfway through the first syllable that, dammit Howard, someone from Vermont can’t pull off “yee-haw,” and then panicking and switching to “yeah!” or “yay!” all at once, but it was too late and a lump in your throat made it come out like the death knell of a tortured bobcat
8. True or False: It makes perfect sense that the twenty-five-year abortion record of the presidential candidate who ended Roe v. Wade has less Wikipedia content than the three-second audio record of a candidate who just, you know, was pumped up in the face of a setback in the Iowa caucuses, so pumped that he lost control of his body in a burst of unvarnished optimism:
A. True
B. False
C. There has not been a difference between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, or sanity and insanity since early 2004
9. Which charges would provoke widespread calls to suspend a campaign?
A. Being charged in New York with thirty-four felony counts for covering up sex with a porn star
B. Being charged in Florida with forty felony counts for stealing state secrets and lying to the FBI
C. Being charged in Georgia with ten felony counts for conspiring to steal an election
D. Being charged in DC with four felony counts for trying to stop the electoral vote certification in Congress in order to seize power from the lawful president-elect, Joe Biden, in violation of the US Constitution and the peaceful transfer of power
E. Being charged with all eighty-eight felony counts above, all in a five-month period
F. Being charged with a zeal to oppose the invasion of Iraq and establish universal health care, which looks pretty good these days if you ask some people but was apparently too sincere for the petty, vindictive shitheads who actually vote in this country.
10. Which of the following statements would make voters question a presidential candidate’s mental capacity?
B. “YEEEAAAAAWW!!!”
Part 2 – Essay (50,000 pts)
Write a twenty-five-page essay on the following question:
Does anything even matter?
Science And Wonder And Beauty
I remember seeing a headline or a hyperlink somewhere, maybe yesterday or the day before, but I didn’t get to the story. Lucky for me, it’s linked again in an email today, so here it is!
Whale filmed giving birth, with a little help from her friends
Paris (France) (AFP) – Scientists have managed to film a spectacular event rarely witnessed by humans: a sperm whale giving birth while other females worked together to support the mother and her newborn.
A team from Project CETI, an international effort seeking to understand how whales communicate, were in a boat near a pod of 11 whales off the coast of the Caribbean island of Dominica on July 8, 2023.
A 19-year-old female named Rounder was surrounded by family members and others as she was about to give birth to her second calf.
Over nearly five and a half hours, the scientists documented the group’s behaviour, watching them from the boat, filming them with drones and recording the sounds underneath the waves.
The data they collected, which was published in the journals Scientific Reports and Science on Thursday, represent an exceptional rarity in the history of science.
Out of 93 species of cetaceans — a group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises — only nine have ever been observed giving birth in the wild.
Rarer still was that whales not related to the mother were helping out.
“This is the first evidence of birth assistance in non-primates,” Project CETI team member Shane Gero told the New Scientist.
“It is fascinating to see the intergenerational support from the grandmother to her labouring daughter, and the support from the other, unrelated females.”
Lifting up the newborn
The birth lasted 34 minutes, from their tails emerging from the water to the calf being born.
During labour, other adult females dove under Rounder’s dorsal fin, often on their backs with the heads facing her genital slit.
Immediately after the birth, the pod’s behaviour “rapidly changed” as every member became active, according to the study in Scientific Reports.
All the adults were “squeezing the newborn’s body between theirs, touching it with their heads”, the researchers wrote.
The whales pointed their noses towards the newborn, “pushing it around, under the water, and onto and across their bodies above the surface”.
The remarkable behaviour dates back more than 36 million years and is believed to be due to the unique history of cetaceans.
After their distant ancestors left the water and adapted to life on land, cetaceans are the only mammals that returned to the ocean.
This dive back into the water required some evolutionary tricks to prevent newborns from drowning.
For example, whale calves are born tail-first, rather than head-first like other mammals.
However, while newborn sperm whales become talented swimmers within a few hours, they still sink right after birth.
So other whales have to lift the calf up “to prevent the newborn from sinking while also facilitating its first breaths”, the researchers suggested.
Primates — including humans — are the only other mammals known to help assist each other out during birth.
Excited vocal sounds
The scientists also recorded the whales making many sounds, including significant changes in “vocal style” during key events, the study said.
This included when a group of pilot whales approached the pod after the birth.
The changes in vocalisation suggest that the group was coordinating to support the birth — or protect the newborn, the researchers said.
Sperm whales have one of the longest pregnancies in the animal kingdom, with a gestation period that lasts up to 16 months.
When calves are born they are already four metres (13 feet) long. They will rely on their mother’s milk for at least two years.
As they grow, the young become the centre of their pod’s social unit, with others helping out with babysitting while the mother searches for food.
After the birth was filmed in 2023, the pod was not spotted again for over a year. Then the newborn was spotted with Accra and Aurora — the other young members of the pod — on July 25 last year.
Surviving its first year is a good sign that the sperm whale will reach adulthood, the Project CETI team said.
© 2026 AFP
THE GUARDIAN: ‘Masquerading as a university’: inside the brazen rightwing plan to conquer American schools
‘Masquerading as a university’: inside the brazen rightwing plan to conquer American schools
As teachers eagerly adopt its free lesson plans and the White House boosts its videos, PragerU is intent on one goal: attracting young people to conservatism
Read in The Guardian: https://apple.news/Aqs0t0DpeR1yPE9sm2q8uDA
Shared from Apple News
Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie
Reblog From MPS:
Scottie and I each post from Pro Publica’s excellent news reportage; especially news that gets the barest mention everywhere else. Their excellent reporters can use a hand now. Please read and sign:
Just In Case A Reader Happens By With Some Idea, Or Knows Where To Share This One:
Space Stuff
What’s New at the Earth Observatory April 7, 2026
Image of the Day
NASA’s Earth Observatory brings you the Earth, every day: sharing images, stories, and discoveries about the environment, Earth systems, and climate that emerge from NASA research, including its satellite missions, in-the-field research, and models.
4 min read
The state was unusually dry for much of 2025, but the intensity of the drought has ratcheted up since January…
Apr 7, 2026
Faster Detection of Forest Loss
7 min read
Scientists pioneered a new system that combines data from multiple Earth-observing satellites to identify forest clearing up to 100 days…
Apr 6, 2026
Barents Sea Tied to Low Arctic Sea Ice
4 min read
Patches of open water in the region contributed to low sea ice extent across the Arctic in March 2026, which…
Apr 3, 2026
Space Purge
Hegseth is firing Black generals
The crew of Artemis II set a record for the farthest-traveled humans from Earth, and they still could not get away from Donald Trump. The mission had a 45-minute blackout from communication with Earth while flying over the dark side of the moon, and Donald Trump was waiting for them when they came out of it.
The astronauts had a very uncomfortable and awkward 12-minute Earth-to-space call, facilitated by NASA administrator and Trump acolyte, Jared Isaacman. During the call, Trump told the astronauts how they would be honored if he got their autographs. They were also honored by Trump blowing smoke up their asses and telling them that he had saved NASA from extinction when, in reality, he tried to cut their budget by 24% when he returned to office for his second term. Not just that, (snip-MORE)
And now, this brilliant story from a friend of the blog:
Scottie's Playtime 