What is the basis of the strategy?
Democrat Jennifer Loughran spent the pandemic’s early days sewing face masks for neighbors. Last month, as a newly elected school-board member, she voted to lift the district’s mask mandate. That came four months after she voted for the state’s Republican candidate for governor.
After a monthslong political identity crisis, Ms. Loughran decided her opposition to her party’s mask mandates, economic restrictions and school-closure policies outweighed her support for positions on climate change, abortion and gay rights, at least for the moment.
Watching her daughter fall behind in virtual kindergarten, Ms. Loughran had grown so frustrated not knowing when her children would return to the classroom that she joined a group that attracted right-leaning parents in its school-reopening push. She was unhappy that Gov. Phil Murphy didn’t fight to reopen schools sooner, and she associated his fellow Democrats with mask mandates and restrictions.
She hasn’t decided which party to pick this fall in her local House race, a contest expected to help determine control of Congress. "What I do know," she said, "is that my party-line vote shouldn’t be taken for granted anymore."
The defection of once-loyal voters like Ms. Loughran—along with disapproval from independents—is among the challenges Democrats face in their bid to retain control of Congress and win state-level races in this November’s midterm elections. These voters say Democratic officials left pandemic restrictions in place too long and mishandled the health crisis, with devastating consequences for their children, while Republicans have generally pushed to minimize school closures and keep the economy open.
The party out of power usually wins midterm elections during a president’s first term. Public-opinion surveys signal that the trend is holding firm. A Wall Street Journal poll taken in March showed that 46% of U.S. voters plan to back Republican candidates for Congress, while 41% would support Democrats.
On the pandemic, the Journal poll showed voters believed Democrats were best able to get the pandemic under control by a 9-percentage-point margin. But that was down from 16 points just four months earlier.
Regionally, one of the most significant drops in the party’s pandemic-management approval was in the Northeast, where a 30-point edge for Democrats in November had dropped to 20 points last month, the Journal poll showed. The drop was driven mainly by independents, among whom the party’s 12-point advantage in the previous poll had evaporated. In the new survey, independent voters were split 29% to 29% over which party was best able to handle Covid-19.
Ms. Loughran, a 45-year-old skateboard instructor with red dip-dyed hair and a blue-collar upbringing, had speared an Obama-Biden sign into her suburban home’s lawn and waived a handmade placard at the Women’s March in New York during President Donald Trump’s first year in office.
Her party allegiance began to erode during lockdowns as she and her husband, Michael Loughran, juggled her oldest daughter’s virtual kindergarten, a toddler tolling countless iPad hours and an infant who was diagnosed with a deadly genetic disorder. Her vote for Jack Ciattarelli as New Jersey’s governor was the first time she had backed a Republican in a state or federal contest.
The shift in the New Jersey electorate last fall shocked the political establishment and nearly cost the incumbent Mr. Murphy a second term. Advisers to Mr. Murphy said the campaign underestimated Covid frustration inside the Democratic Party. After the election, in focus groups that Mr. Murphy’s team held to better understand why the race had been so close, Democratic voters articulated their pandemic exhaustion, the advisers said.
The governor has taken steps to address that exhaustion. Mr. Murphy, who had supported strict measures to stem Covid’s spread, was the first of several Democratic governors to lift statewide mask mandates. "We’ve still got people in the hospital in New Jersey, so it’s not like we’re down to zero," Mr. Murphy said. "But there’s just enormous fatigue. And we’re trying to meet the moment without either overshooting it or undershooting it."
Mr. Ciattarelli, on the campaign trail, said the governor should have done more to make the vaccine available to teachers sooner and reopen schools faster. Mr. Ciattarelli, in an interview, said he wouldn’t have come so close to winning without support from Democratic and independent voters and sensed that some of that backing was rooted in pandemic fatigue.
In the Virginia governor’s contest, Glenn Youngkin made parental involvement in schools a top issue and became the first Republican to win the seat in 12 years. His first major legislative action as governor was to end the state’s mask mandate in schools.
Democratic voters broadly support their party’s pandemic response. In a March poll from Rutgers University, 52% of voters graded Gov. Murphy’s Covid response as an "A" or "B," the highest grade for any of the 11 issues tested in the poll. In the Journal’s national poll, 49% of voters said they approved of President Biden’s handling of the virus, among his highest approval ratings in a list of issues included in the survey.
After a monthslong political identity crisis, Ms. Loughran decided her opposition to her party’s mask mandates, economic restrictions and school-closure policies outweighed her support for positions on climate change, abortion and gay rights, at least for the moment.
Watching her daughter fall behind in virtual kindergarten, Ms. Loughran had grown so frustrated not knowing when her children would return to the classroom that she joined a group that attracted right-leaning parents in its school-reopening push. She was unhappy that Gov. Phil Murphy didn’t fight to reopen schools sooner, and she associated his fellow Democrats with mask mandates and restrictions.
She hasn’t decided which party to pick this fall in her local House race, a contest expected to help determine control of Congress. "What I do know," she said, "is that my party-line vote shouldn’t be taken for granted anymore."
The defection of once-loyal voters like Ms. Loughran—along with disapproval from independents—is among the challenges Democrats face in their bid to retain control of Congress and win state-level races in this November’s midterm elections. These voters say Democratic officials left pandemic restrictions in place too long and mishandled the health crisis, with devastating consequences for their children, while Republicans have generally pushed to minimize school closures and keep the economy open.
The party out of power usually wins midterm elections during a president’s first term. Public-opinion surveys signal that the trend is holding firm. A Wall Street Journal poll taken in March showed that 46% of U.S. voters plan to back Republican candidates for Congress, while 41% would support Democrats.
On the pandemic, the Journal poll showed voters believed Democrats were best able to get the pandemic under control by a 9-percentage-point margin. But that was down from 16 points just four months earlier.
Regionally, one of the most significant drops in the party’s pandemic-management approval was in the Northeast, where a 30-point edge for Democrats in November had dropped to 20 points last month, the Journal poll showed. The drop was driven mainly by independents, among whom the party’s 12-point advantage in the previous poll had evaporated. In the new survey, independent voters were split 29% to 29% over which party was best able to handle Covid-19.
Ms. Loughran, a 45-year-old skateboard instructor with red dip-dyed hair and a blue-collar upbringing, had speared an Obama-Biden sign into her suburban home’s lawn and waived a handmade placard at the Women’s March in New York during President Donald Trump’s first year in office.
Her party allegiance began to erode during lockdowns as she and her husband, Michael Loughran, juggled her oldest daughter’s virtual kindergarten, a toddler tolling countless iPad hours and an infant who was diagnosed with a deadly genetic disorder. Her vote for Jack Ciattarelli as New Jersey’s governor was the first time she had backed a Republican in a state or federal contest.
The shift in the New Jersey electorate last fall shocked the political establishment and nearly cost the incumbent Mr. Murphy a second term. Advisers to Mr. Murphy said the campaign underestimated Covid frustration inside the Democratic Party. After the election, in focus groups that Mr. Murphy’s team held to better understand why the race had been so close, Democratic voters articulated their pandemic exhaustion, the advisers said.
The governor has taken steps to address that exhaustion. Mr. Murphy, who had supported strict measures to stem Covid’s spread, was the first of several Democratic governors to lift statewide mask mandates. "We’ve still got people in the hospital in New Jersey, so it’s not like we’re down to zero," Mr. Murphy said. "But there’s just enormous fatigue. And we’re trying to meet the moment without either overshooting it or undershooting it."
Mr. Ciattarelli, on the campaign trail, said the governor should have done more to make the vaccine available to teachers sooner and reopen schools faster. Mr. Ciattarelli, in an interview, said he wouldn’t have come so close to winning without support from Democratic and independent voters and sensed that some of that backing was rooted in pandemic fatigue.
In the Virginia governor’s contest, Glenn Youngkin made parental involvement in schools a top issue and became the first Republican to win the seat in 12 years. His first major legislative action as governor was to end the state’s mask mandate in schools.
Democratic voters broadly support their party’s pandemic response. In a March poll from Rutgers University, 52% of voters graded Gov. Murphy’s Covid response as an "A" or "B," the highest grade for any of the 11 issues tested in the poll. In the Journal’s national poll, 49% of voters said they approved of President Biden’s handling of the virus, among his highest approval ratings in a list of issues included in the survey.
