US Politics
Democrats hold a huge edge over Republicans in polling ahead of the midterms
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A new wave of polling this week underscores the troubling reality emerging for Republicans and Donald Trump ahead of this fall’s midterms.
In an Emerson College survey conducted over the weekend, Republicans faced their biggest gap on a generic ballot yet. Democrats have a 10-point advantage over Republican candidates when individual positions and policies aren’t factored into the equation.
The rot comes from the White House: The same survey found Donald Trump now clearly underwater with voters on three major policy categories, the economy, foreign policy and immigration, categories where the president’s ratings were mixed or barely positive in the same survey one year ago.
At the same time, his war in Iran is viewed as a failure of American foreign policy and military might by a majority of Americans, 53 percent, while just 35 percent think the U.S. has achieved some or all of its goals. The number of undecideds is just 12 percent in the poll. Majorities of independents and Democrats view it as a failure, and only two-thirds of Republicans see it as a success.
Possibly most troubling for Republican, especially in places such as Texas and Florida where lawmakers have sought (or are seeking) to gerrymander districts using the 2024 election results, the president’s reputation with independents and hispanics in particular have both nosedived. Seven in ten hispanic voters now disapprove of the president’s performance, compared to a split result in April of 2025.
“Democrats’ strength is driven by an increase in support among Hispanic voters, women, and independents,” said the poll’s executive director Spencer Kimbrall.
Other polling released by a Republican super PAC called Conservatives for America this week examined nine battleground House districts, purple-red areas that were all won by Trump and GOP candidates in 2024, and polled residents in each one. The polls found that some incumbent House Republicans are already trailing in the polls or come within just a few percentage points of hypothetical or announced Democratic challengers.
Most were still ahead, but none had particularly comfortable leads and expect their challenges to become more serious once campaigning begins in earnest. The effects of Donald Trump’s sinking approval rating on the respective GOP incumbents in the poll was unmistakeable.
Separately, an Economist/YouGov poll looked at Trump’s popularity broken down among age groups — which can be important in midterm years when turnout drops among lower-propensity voters (who trend younger). The outlook for the president is grim: He’s underwater with every age group and recently plunged to his lowest depths yet with both millennials and those over the age of 65.
The MAGA coalition is clearly cracking in the Economist/YouGov survey, which also found that the number of Americans who “strongly” approve of Trump’s job performance has now dipped below one in five.
Republicans have vowed to commit massive sums of money to protecting their congressional majorities, which currently favors the GOP by four votes in the House and three in the Senate. There are also just two Republicans running for re-election in districts that former vice president Kamala Harris won in 2024 – Mike Lawler and Brian Fitzpatrick. The two are respectively among the top fundraisers of the cycle, each having brought in more than $5 million so far.
Democrats, however, are bolstered by GOP retirements and a Senate map that took sharp turn in their favor over the course of 2025 with the announcement that Sen. Thom Tillis would not run for re-election and the launching of Mary Peltola’s bid for Senate in Alaska.
Trump has warned that Democrats will seek to impeach him again if they win back the House and Senate.
Megyn Kelly, one of a long list of conservative commentators who’ve earned Trump’s rage in recent days for pointing out the political weaknesses of his administration heading into midterm season, laid it out for the president on her show last week.
“Americans prefer Democrats to Republicans on the economy for the first time since 2010, first time in 16 years,” she said. “Trump has cratered…like not even present tense anymore. It’s done! You’re effed! You need to adjust something ASAP.”