Trump’s Approval Sinks to New Lows Weeks Ahead of the Midterms
A string of surveys puts the president's approval between 31% and 37%, with forecasters projecting Democrats retake both chambers of Congress. The White House says the polls are simply wrong.
With the midterm elections just weeks away, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have fallen to some of the weakest levels of his political career, according to a string of polls released over the past week — a trend that, if it holds, threatens Republicans’ narrow congressional majorities.
An AP-NORC poll released last week put Trump’s approval at 31%, the lowest level recorded in that survey across either of his two terms; his previous low was 32%, recorded in surveys conducted between late September and early December 2017. A Wall Street Journal poll released last weekend put his approval at 37% — two points below former President George W. Bush’s 39% approval ahead of the 2006 midterms, after which Democrats gained five Senate seats and 31 House seats. A Quinnipiac University poll released Sept. 30 found 34% approval against 61% disapproval, a disapproval figure that matched the highest Quinnipiac has ever recorded for Trump; the last time it stood that high was Jan. 18, 2021, days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The averages tell the same story. As of Oct. 2, Trump’s average approval stood at 37% against 61% disapproval in the New York Times average, 38.2% to 60.3% at RealClearPolitics, and 37.1% to 60.6% in Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin average.
Voters blame the president for the cost of living
The economy appears to be the main driver. In the AP-NORC survey, 65% of Americans said they blamed the president’s policies for increasing costs, and separate results from the poll found 82% disapproved of Trump’s handling of the cost of living — up from 76% in March — while 73% disapproved of his handling of the economy, up from 62% a year ago.
“There’s no floor for Republicans right now,” Zachary Donnini, head of data science at VoteHub, told USA Today. “I think there’s a 20 or 25% chance the midterm outcome is devastating for Republicans because Trump is super unpopular and Republican voters seem to be not super enthused to come out.” Forecasters at Decision Desk HQ currently project Democrats retaking the Senate with 51 seats and winning the House with 234 seats.
The White House pushes back
Administration officials are publicly rejecting the surveys. National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he isn’t “buying” the polls, suggesting they came from “possibly partisan pollsters” and calling it “a classic Democrat move.” Pressed on when gasoline — $4.37 a gallon on average, according to AAA — would return to $3, and when inflation would return to 2%, Hassett said: “The American people look at what’s in their wallets and then they react accordingly.”
Not every Republican is so dismissive. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he expects a close election and that the cost of living is the biggest issue for voters. “Telling them not to believe their own lying checkbooks is not going to work,” he said.
There is one caveat for Democrats: their voters’ enthusiasm may matter less if polling itself is skewed. Republicans have become increasingly difficult for pollsters to reach, Donnini noted, which could mean Democratic candidates perform worse on the national congressional ballot than surveys suggest. For reference, Democrats won the national congressional ballot by 8.4 percentage points in 2018 — a result Donnini called the point at which, this year, “a 2018-level wave would be a big disappointment for Democrats.” The next few weeks of surveys, and then the voters, will decide.
Reporting based on coverage by USA Today and Barron’s.
