Energized against Donald Trump, Democrats reach +14 in the midterms originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

With their supporters energized in opposition to Donald Trump, Democrats hold their widest advantage in midterm election vote preferences since 2006, when they seized control of both houses of Congress.

Rebounding from a tighter contest in the spring, Democratic House candidates now lead their Republican opponents nationally by 52-38 percent among registered voters in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll – a lead that holds up across a range of likely voter models.

See PDF for full results, charts and tables.

Surpassing that Democratic lead in vote choice, 60 percent of registered voters say they’d rather see the next Congress controlled by the Democrats, as a check on Trump, than by the GOP, to support Trump’s agenda. Preference for Democratic control is up 8 points from a year ago.

The Democrats’ advantage reflects Trump’s broad unpopularity. As reported Friday, 36 percent of Americans approve of his job performance, the lowest approval rating for a president heading into his first midterms in polling dating to 1954. Next closest were Jimmy Carter’s 42 percent in 1978; Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at 46 percent in 2010 and 1994, respectively; and Ronald Reagan’s 48 percent in 1982.

Most of those are not good omens for the Republicans: The parties in control of the White House lost 63 House seats in Obama’s first midterms, 52 in Clinton’s and 26 in Reagan’s (but fewer, 15, in Carter’s). And in 2006, when the Democrats last held pre-election leads as high theirs now, they gained 31 seats.

PHOTO: President Donald Trump speaks during a fundraiser at the Carmel Country Club, Aug. 31, 2018, in Charlotte, N.C. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images) More

Underscoring Trump’s potential role, 59 percent of registered voters say it’s highly important to them to support a candidate who shares their opinion of the president. Essentially equal numbers of Trump’s supporters and opponents say so. The difference is that his critics outnumber his backers by a 22-point margin in this survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates.

Notably, far fewer, 34 percent, strongly seek a candidate who shares their view of Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader and GOP election foil.

Other results underscore the Democrats’ opportunity and the GOP’s challenge. Among them:

• While 51 percent of Americans say the Democratic Party is out of touch with most people’s concerns, that’s down 16 points since April 2017. And many more, 63 percent, say both Trump and the Republican Party are out of touch, with no gain for either.

• Sixty-five percent of registered voters say it’s more important to them to vote compared with past midterm elections. Among those who approve of Trump’s work in office, 56 percent say so. But among the much larger number who disapprove of Trump, many more, 73 percent, say it’s more important to them to vote this year.

• The number of self-reported registered voters who say they’re certain to vote this year has grown from 62 percent in January to 67 percent in April to 75 percent now. Those gains have occurred disproportionately in more Democratic groups – up 24 points among blacks since April, up 17 points among 18- to 29-year-olds and up 11 points among Democrats and moderates alike, for example.

• The shares of Democrats, Republicans and independents in the survey is typical of their long-term levels -- 34, 27 and 33 percent, respectively, among registered voters. But more independents are now leaning toward the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party -- 46 percent, vs. 36 percent in April.

Impeachment?

A broad 72 percent of registered voters think the Democrats will try to impeach Trump if they take control of the House -- a line the Republicans have been using to push against voting for Democratic candidates. But the approach has its challenges.

The reason is that, among those who support Democratic candidates, 72 percent in fact favor impeachment proceedings against Trump. Support for impeachment plummets among GOP voters, to just 12 percent. As such, the GOP may motivate more of its voters to turn out in opposition to impeachment – but in so doing, it risks motivating Democratic voters to turn out for precisely the opposite reason.

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