The Republican Party has an edge again in the generic ballot, and that advantage has reached a level last seen in late July, according to a RealClearPolitics average for that closely watched indicator.
Republicans are now scoring 46.0% support in the RCP average of generic ballots, a percentage point ahead of Democrats at 45.0%.
The GOP hit a 1-point edge last Wednesday, then saw a dip, but as of Tuesday was back at that level, as shown in the chart below.
It’s not a big advantage, but it’s the best showing for Republicans in RCP’s data for generic ballots since July 28, as Democrats had the advantage for much of August and September.
The generic ballot refers to a poll question that asks voters which party they would support in a congressional election without naming individual candidates. Analysts tend to see it as a useful indicator.
Other websites focused on political analysis and forecasting, such as FiveThirtyEight, still show Democrats with an edge in their data for generic ballots.
Election Day for the midterm contests is now five weeks away. Democrats have focused their campaigns on abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s June decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, while Republicans have seized on Americans’ frustration with high inflation.
The additional chart below is interactive and shows RCP’s data for the generic ballot over a longer time frame.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dropped its country-by-country COVID-19 travel health notices that it began issuing early in the pandemic, the Associated Press reported.
The reason: Fewer countries are testing for the virus or reporting the number of COVID cases. That limits the CDC’s ability to calculate travelers’ risk, according to the agency.
CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said the agency will only post a travel health notice for an individual country if a situation such as a troubling new variant of the virus changes CDC travel recommendations for that country.
The CDC still recommends that travelers remain up-to-date on vaccines and follow recommendations found on its international travel page.
A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research has confirmed that political affiliations played a key role as a risk factor for dying of COVID, finding evidence that Republican-leaning counties suffered higher death rates than Democratic-leaning ones.
“We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states,” the authors, Jacob Wallace and Jason L. Schwartz of the Yale School of Public Health, and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham of the Yale School of Management wrote.
“Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats.”
The researchers used data from Ohio and Florida and matched 2017 voter registration data with mortality data from 2018 to 2021. They also found a link between political affiliation and views on vaccines, with Republican-leaning counties showing far lower vaccination rates.
Source: NBER paper
In the U.S., known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 45,495 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 24% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in 11 states plus Washington, D.C. They are up by double-digit percentages in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,854, while the daily average for deaths is down 12% to 386.
• Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. NCLH, +16.84%
is removing all COVID testing, vaccination and masking requirements from its health and safety protocols. The company said the new protocols, which follows “significant, positive progress” in the public health environment, will be effective Oct. 4. “Health and safety are always our first priority; in fact, we were the health and safety leaders from the very start of the pandemic,” said Chief Executive Harry Sommer. “Many travelers have been patiently waiting to take their long-awaited vacation at sea and we cannot wait to celebrate their return.”
• Ringo Starr has test positive for COVID, forcing the former Beatle to cancel scheduled concerts in Canada with his All Starr Band, the AP reported. Five concert dates from Tuesday to Sunday — in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Lethbridge, Alberta; and the British Columbia cities of Abbotsford and Penticton — will be rescheduled. “Ringo hopes to resume as soon as possible and is recovering at home. As always, he and the All Starrs send peace and love to their fans and hope to see them back out on the road soon,” said a statement from the band.
The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes
• A federal appeals court in New Orleans on Monday became the latest to hear arguments on whether President Joe Biden overstepped his authority with an order that federal contractors require that their employees be vaccinated against COVID, the AP reported separately. The contractor mandate has a complicated legal history. It is being challenged in more than a dozen federal court districts, and the mandate has been blocked or partially blocked in 25 states.
• The Chinese resort city of Sanya has ordered all tourists to take PCR tests, and those who fail to do so by noon on Tuesday will be slapped with a yellow code restricting their mobility, according to local officials, the South China Morning Post reported. The city in the southern province of Hainan logged two asymptomatic Covid-19 cases on Monday. It carried out a round of mass testing and locked down several areas in Haitang district, including a scenic island that received around 2,000 tourists on Monday.
The U.S. leads the world with 96.4 million cases and 1,059,888 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.
Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.
Russian authorities are opening more military enlistment offices near Russia’s borders in an apparent effort to intercept some of the Russian men of fighting age who are trying to flee the country by land to avoid being called up to fight in Ukraine.
A new draft office opened at the Ozinki checkpoint in the Saratov region on Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, regional officials said Thursday. Another enlistment center was set to open at a crossing in the Astrakhan region, also on the border with Kazakhstan.
Earlier this week, makeshift Russian draft offices were set up near the Verkhny Lars border crossing into Georgia in southern Russia and near the Torfyanka checkpoint on Russia’s border with Finland. Russian officials said they would hand call-up notices to all eligible men who were trying to leave the country.
Over 194,000 Russian citizens have fled to neighboring Georgia, Kazakhstan and Finland — most often by car, bicycle or on foot — since Russian President Vladimir Putin last week announced a partial mobilization of reservists. In Russia, the vast majority of men under age 65 are registered as reservists.
The Kremlin has said it plans to call-up some 300,000 people, but Russian media reported that the number could be as high as 1.2 million, a claim that Russian officials have denied.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has promised to only draft those who have combat or service experience, but according to multiple media reports and human rights advocates, men who don’t fit the criteria are also being rounded up.
The official decree on mobilization, signed by Putin last week, is concise and vague, fueling fears of a broader draft.
In an apparent effort to calm the population, Putin told Russia’s Security Council on Thursday that mistakes had been made in the mobilization. He said that Russian men mistakenly called up for service should be sent back home, and that only reservists with proper training and specialties should be summoned to serve.
“It’s necessary to deal with each such case independently, but if there is a mistake, I repeat, it must be fixed. It’s necessary to bring back those who were drafted without proper reason,” Putin stressed.
The mass exodus of Russian men — alone or with their families or friends — began Sept. 21, shortly after Putin’s address to the nation, and continued all this week. Airline tickets to destinations abroad have sold out days in advance, even at unprecedentedly high prices.
Long lines of cars formed on roads leading to Russia’s borders. Russian authorities tried to stem the outflow by turning back some men at the borders, citing mobilization laws, or setting up draft offices at border checkpoints.
The bus stations in Samara and Tolyatti, two large Russian cities in the Samara region, on Thursday halted service to Uralsk, a border city in Kazakhstan.
Finland announced that it would ban Russian citizens with tourist visas from entering the country starting Friday. With the exception of Norway, which has only one border crossing with Russia, Finland has provided the last easily accessible land route to Europe for Russian holders of European Schengen-zone visas. The Nordic country has taken in tens of thousands of people fleeing the military call-up in recent days.
