New Jersey
Republican challengers in New Jersey still face uphill Congressional campaigns
Despite this, Rasmussen still says “a tidal wave” favoring Trump would be needed for down-ballot candidates to be successful. But he expects no tidal wave on the horizon, due to the political division of the country.
“It’s hard to see a tidal wave when you’ve got rock bed Democrats who will never consider [Trump,] and rock-bed Republicans who will never consider Biden,” he said. “They’re virtually immovable.”
Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, says most voters are entrenched in their opinions and beliefs. He said the public is polarized to the point that an assassination attempt, let alone a convention, probably won’t “move the needle that much” because “there’s very little room for the needle to move to begin with.”
“Polling can only do so much, we might see a trend where things move in a couple of points in one direction or the other,” Murray said. “Unless we see that consistently, and over time, we’re really not sure what’s going on, because that could just simply be the margin of error that we’re measuring.”