Yesterday, Gallup released a poll showing a few things, and none of them are good for Democrats.* The first is that Republicans had expanded their lead over Democrats as the party people believe is best equipped to protect the United States from terrorism:

The Republicans’ lead over the Democrats on the question of terrorism is, as you can see, at historic levels. Not since the poll began has the GOP’s lead been this large. As RedState’s Dear Leader Erick Erickson notes, this is what happens when you don’t have a coherent anti-terrorism strategy:

At the beginning of this year, President Obama referred to ISIS as junior varsity. Later in the year he declared them amateurs. Less than three weeks ago the President said he had no strategy to combat ISIS. Less than two weeks ago, President Obama referred to the non-ISIS rebels in Syria as farmers incapable of leading the resistance against ISIS. This past Wednesday night, President Obama’s bold new strategy is to arm the very rebels he says are incapable of leading resistance to ISIS.

But who are the rebels? They are people who have been in a civil war against the Syrian government. But from the rebels have also come loyal foot soldiers for ISIS. How does the President know the rebels will not use our weapons and funds to fight Syria instead of ISIS? Likewise, how does the President know some of the rebels will not take our weapons to ISIS?

More troubling, how does the President know these rebels will not turn on us? And is it not possible the Syrian government and ISIS may now make an alliance of convenience to rapidly and jointly crush the rebels? The sad truth is Barack Obama knows the answers to none of those questions, but wants Congress to approve sending arms and training to the rebels anyway.

But the bad news for Democrats does not end there.

Republicans are also favored as the party best equipped to lead the country back to prosperity.

This is where the real DOOM! comes in. This particular measure largely correlates with electoral success for the party that is ahead. The Republican Party’s lead on the question right now is similar to where the party stood around the 2010 elections, which were, as we should all remember, a wipeout for the Democrats on all levels.

The graph Gallup provides (which you will have to visit their site for) displaying how this correlates with electoral success for the President’s party in recent midterm elections is pretty clear: at least since 1998, the President’s party has little to gain and a lot to lose by this measure. In particular, when the President’s party is underwater on this issue, the results tend to be catastrophic. Republicans had an 8 point lead over the Democrats prior to the 2010 election and gained 63 seats in the House. The Republicans were down by 17 points in 2006 and lost 30 seats. Right now, the GOP’s lead sits at 9 points. I personally don’t expect us to win another 63 seats in the House, but I do expect us to win back some of the seats we lost in 2012.  Also, while the poll doesn’t talk about Senate seats, I do suspect that is where we shall see our greatest success electorally this year.

November should be fun.

*=The featured image is a map of the GOP’s gains in the House in 2010, if you can’t tell, via Wikipedia.