The ups and downs in Trump’s standing at this point are driven mostly by Republicans and Republican-leaning independents - Democrats are almost unanimous in their rejection of him. The amount varies from survey to survey, but the latest YouGov poll was fairly typical: It found Democrats holding an eight-point lead, 41%-33%īecause Democratic candidates rely on younger and less affluent voters, who don’t show up to vote as reliably as Republicans do, they will need an advantage of that scale or larger on the generic ballot to be confident of taking a House majority. On the generic ballot, Republicans already have a sizable disadvantage. If his approval consistently drops below that level into the mid-30s, the drag would likely be fatal to GOP hopes. The share who disapprove has remained in the mid-50s, with a small percentage undecided.Īt 40% approval, Trump would be a drag on his party’s efforts to hold onto its House majority. It has fluctuated slightly from survey to survey since then, but on average has not climbed back above four in 10. His approval fell below 40% in polling averages last month, during the Senate debate on repealing the Affordable Care Act. The share of Americans who approve of Trump’s job performance started low and has dropped slowly but fairly steadily throughout his presidency, with the biggest drops coming each time the debate over healthcare legislation has dominated the news.

On both scores, Republicans currently sit in very risky territory. The other is a question asking voters which party they’d like to see win - a so-called generic ballot. Political scientists have found that two polling measures typically have provided good guidance on how midterm elections will go. The issue for 2018 will be how many: Democrats, who currently hold 194 seats in the House, would need to pick up 24 for a majority. The party in the White House almost always loses seats in a president’s first midterm election. The current polls can tell us more, however, about next year’s midterm elections. The election is much too far away to predict and it’s possible that voters who say they disapprove of a president’s performance might cast ballots for him, regardless, if they dislike the opposing candidate. None of that means Trump would definitely lose those states if he runs for reelection in 2020. “Residents are clearly dissatisfied in how candidate Trump transitioned into President Trump,” Lee Miringoff, the director of the poll, wrote in describing his results.

Those defections dwarf the size of Trump’s margin over Hillary Clinton in those three states, which ranged from eight-tenths of a point in Pennsylvania down to two-tenths of a point in Michigan. Roughly one in five Trump voters in each of the three states chose “embarrassed” when asked how his conduct in office makes them feel.

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