Will world chaos sink the Democrats in November?

It would appear foreign policy is not going to be the deciding issue in the 2014 midterms. Fewer than four out of ten voters say that foreign policy is a “very important” issue in determining how they vote this year (PDF). And of course international relations and national security fall much more squarely in the executive branch, making congressional and statewide elections a poor venue for hashing out debates about the right approach to taking on ISIS or Vladimir Putin.

But if Americans are increasingly upset with how the President is handling foreign policy, and it continues to weigh down his overall job approval, it not only makes him a less effective advocate on the campaign trail—it makes voters less likely to want to vote to give him a friendlier Congress. The argument that voters ought to get rid of the Republicans so that Obama can have his way is a lot more potent when Obama is at fifty percent job approval than when he’s below forty. A president with job approval in the low forties is a much less appealing campaign trail sidekick than one who is in the fifties.