Is there any good polling news for the Democrats? Like left-wing parties across the West, the Dems could always count on education as one of their strongest issues.
Not any more. New polling, commissioned by the American Federation of Teachers — one of the Democrats’ most reliable supporters — has found that voters in battleground states no longer trust the Democrats very much on education.
Pollsters found that 39% of respondents trust Republicans more on education than Democrats.
Of course, the margin is razor-thin: 38% “have more confidence” in the Democrats “to deal with education issues”. But even that 1% ought to be alarming to Democrat strategists. As the pollsters comment, Democrats traditionally enjoyed a double-digit lead over the Republicans. That lead has evaporated.
And with the same poll finding that 23% of voters ranked education as one of the most important issues (and another 46% as “very important”) to decide their vote, Democrats ought to be panicking.
Democratic pollsters told NBC News that voters want kids taught the good and the bad of race relations and don’t want kids taught about gender identity and sexuality […]
The poll also asked respondents what they believe the most important aspect of public schooling to be. Top issues include “making sure students have strong fundamental skills in reading, math, and science,” and “teaching practical life skills, like how to balance a checkbook and deal with money.”
Ranked fifth and sixth, respectively, are “having students understand America’s history, both the good and the bad” and “developing students’ social and emotional skills like self-control and awareness of others.”
Aside from embedding gender-whisperers and race-baiting in their curricula, schools have been pushing fluffy tripe called “social-emotional learning” over maths, reading and writing. Big surprise: education results have plummeted.
Virginia, which served as a battleground for education policy issues in electoral politics in the 2020 gubernatorial race, reported that students are failing to hit basic proficiency standards as the state saw a “rhetorical emphasis on equity.”
The state’s Education Department found that education gaps exist in all aspects of K-12 learning and only 33% of Virginia eighth graders and 38% of fourth graders are proficient in reading as of 2019. These levels dropped before the COVID-19 pandemic moved schools online and before the reignition of the Black Lives Matter movement made its way into schools.
Which means that even worse drops in results are already built in to the pipeline. If the Dems thought Virginia’s “Mama Bears” were angry, they’ve surely not seen anything, yet.
Looking to the mid-terms, the news from the poll doesn’t get any better.
The same polling data found that 47% of voters said they are in favor of a Republican-controlled Congress, compared to just 41% who said they favor a Democratic-controlled Congress.
The Daily Caller
As for Sleepy Joe: just 16% strongly approved of his performance, compared to 41% who strongly disapproved.
The funniest thing about this poll, though, is just what a spectacular own-goal it is.
This was just an epic self-own for Randi Weingarten, her teachers’ union’s own poll tearing the narrative into shreds […]
The GOP has a perfect opportunity here to become the parents’ party. Hopefully, they don’t screw it up and can learn from Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. He showed them the way to lean into parental rights. It’s a political winner.
Fox News
When the “rainbow” left smirked that “We’re coming for your kids”, they obviously didn’t anticipate what would happen when parents realised that they weren’t joking.