Bad leadership? Dragging on all of the most important issues with voters? Impotent? If those applied to the Republican party in a nationwide survey at any time, the results would get screamed in the headlines, or at least in the lede of the report from the media outlet that commissioned the poll.
Instead, CNN led with this yesterday about the results of its own poll:
Neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party has consolidated a majority of the public behind its approach, with more than 4 in 10 saying that neither party can get things done or has strong leadership, a new CNN survey conducted by SSRS finds. Despite those widespread doubts, Americans increasingly say they see meaningful differences between the two parties.
The poll, taken as public opinion resettles in the first months of Donald Trump’s second administration, also finds a record-high share of the public saying that the government should be doing more to solve problems. Americans are evenly split on which party best reflects their views on the role of the federal government, with one-third of respondents saying neither party does.
Ah, the old a pox upon both houses approach. It’s not totally inaccurate, as the data show, but it misses the point. Large numbers of Americans don’t trust either party, a result that literally permeates every single political poll generated in America over the last twenty years. In other words, that’s not news.
CNN reporter Manu Raju got a lot closer to the actual news:
CNN POLL CONDUCTED BY SSRS
May 5-26
Which Party Is:
Party With Strong Leaders?Republicans 40%
Democrats 16%
Neither 43%Which Party Is:
Party That Can Get Things Done?Democrats 19%
Republicans 36%
Neither 44%https://t.co/VrQ1LIS90Y pic.twitter.com/3hf5AWZAEm— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 1, 2025
It even takes almost two minutes for Raju and analyst David Chalian to get to the point, but at least they cover the data in Raju’s tweet. How did CNN cover that in their report? The first mention comes in the sixth paragraph:
Asked to choose which of the parties they see as the “party that can get things done,” “the party with strong leaders” or the “party of change,” the lion’s share of the public – more than 4 in 10 – say that neither party fits the bill.
You have to read down to the eighth paragraph to finally see some of the data in Raju’s tweet and Chalian’s on-air discussion:
While neither political party is viewed as especially strong or effective, skepticism weighs particularly heavily on the Democratic Party. Americans are far more likely to see Republicans than Democrats as the party with strong leaders: 40% say this descriptor applies more to the GOP, with just 16% saying it applies to the Democrats. They’re also more likely to call Republicans the party that can get things done by 36% to 19%, and the party of change, by 32% to 25%.
Bear in mind that CNN’s polls generally lean towards Democrats, too. These are terrible numbers for Democrats, and they aren’t the only indicators of political crisis either. Chalian and Raju go through the issue numbers, and Republicans are still dominating on the most important policy areas:
- Crime and policing: GOP 40%, Dems 27%
- Immigration: 39/33
- Economy: 38/31
- Taxes: 37/30
Even on secondary issues where Democrats have long dominated, they only barely keep ahead of Republicans (shown as GOP/Dems again):
- Education: 34/41
- Abortion: 39/29
- LGBT issues: 36/28
And these results should really send shivers down Democrat spines:
- The party of the middle class: 32/34
- The party of change: 32/25
As the poll data notes, that last question favored Democrats in 2006 by a 56/29 gap, nearly a 2:1 ratio. The circumstances were somewhat analogous, too; Democrats were out of power under a second-term Republican president. CNN didn’t offer any historical data on the “middle class” question, but it’s a fair assumption that Democrats had more identification as thus twenty years ago than they do now.
The real disaster here, though, is on leadership. Chalian and Raju never really get around to drilling down into that 40/19 result, even though they spend time analyzing some narrowing of the GOP advantage on the economy, which again isn’t really news. The cratering on leadership is directly related to the fraud Democrat leaders perpetrated on American voters over the last four years regarding Joe Biden’s clear cognitive incapacity for office, which Biden is helpfully continuing to demonstrate publicly. When the entire party establishment has been exposed as co-conspirators to that fraud, or too gutless to speak out against it (with the notably courageous exception of Dean Phillips), the only real surprise in the leadership question is that the score for Democrats is as high as 19%.
And that’s why CNN doesn’t want to talk about that result. They were part of the fraud, as was the rest of the Protection Racket Media.
