President Trump is pulling immigration agents from Minneapolis as the unrest there begins to fade. But his approval rating keeps edging down.
Only 40 percent of voters approve of his performance, according to our tracker, while 56 percent disapprove. That’s his lowest rating so far this term.
Where does that leave Republicans in this midterm election year? That’s one of the questions we’ll answer in this week’s mailbag.
Connection between job approval and race results
It’s not too early to start thinking about questions like this one:
Can we make any correlation between Trump’s approval ratings and the midterm Senate and House elections? Would that apply to the national polls or do we need Trump’s approval in the individual congressional districts/states? — George Eichelberger, Smyrna, Ga.
Historically, there’s a reasonably strong relationship between presidential approval nationwide and midterm outcomes. It’s not a perfect correlation — in 2022, for instance, Joe Biden’s approval ratings were worse than Barack Obama’s had been in 2010 (and as bad as Mr. Trump’s today), but Democrats held their own and nearly retained full control of Congress. But the relationship is good enough to say that Republicans are in trouble.
How much trouble? If the only thing you knew was Mr. Trump’s 40 percent approval rating (and the number of Republican-held seats), you might guess that Republicans would lose 30 seats in the House. And while there have been exceptions, this year’s midterms don’t look like one of them.
Take the 2022 midterms, when Republicans failed to capitalize on Mr. Biden’s unpopularity. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the persistent Republican effort to overturn the 2020 election kept voters atypically focused on the actions of the party out of power. “Democracy” and “abortion” rose as top issues; Mr. Biden, while unpopular, didn’t attract the spotlight. It was enough to give Democrats an advantage among highly engaged voters, which in many key states mitigated the usual midterm turnout disadvantage for the party in power. Democrats demonstrated their advantage with a string of impressive showings in special congressional elections before the November election.
There are still many months to go, but for now it’s hard to see a similar set of factors aiding Republicans. And it’s easy to imagine how this election could be a referendum on the president. He’s center stage, and that’s the way he likes it. The Democratic Party’s weaknesses, while real, are quite ordinary. There’s nothing that seems likely to fundamentally shift the most important issues at stake to the advantage of Republicans, as the court’s decision in Dobbs did for Democrats. And this time, the same Democratic turnout edge that hurt Republicans in 2022 will probably supercharge Democratic strength.
In the run-up to the 2024 election, this newsletter devoted a lot of energy to downplaying strong Democratic showings in special elections. I can’t offer similar reassurance to Republicans this time. For one, midterm electorates tend to have a bigger share of highly engaged voters than presidential electorates, making them much more like special electorates. If you have a clear advantage among the “special” electorate, you probably also do among the “midterm” electorate, albeit to a lesser extent. And this time, it’s clear that the Democratic strength isn’t merely a matter of turnout: There are many Republican-leaning voters backing Democrats.
The latest example is the recent special election in a red Texas State Senate district. According to voter turnout data available from the county, the Democrat, Taylor Rehmet, won by double digits despite an R+19 electorate (49-30). It’s possible the electorate wasn’t quite as red as those figures make it sound — it’s based on who voted in recent primaries, and perhaps some of these “Republican” primary voters in this red state usually vote Democratic in general elections. But on paper, the partisan makeup of the electorate didn’t differ greatly from other recent elections. The result did.
If you follow the money, what does it show?
After our last poll, many readers expressed curiosity about Mr. Trump’s standing among voters of different income levels.
It would be interesting to look at income levels for Republican voters and Democratic voters, to see where vulnerability on the economy as an issue may exist. — Joyce Mary
One reader even went so far as to suggest that income may be more important than anything else:
To me, reporting poll results by income may now be more important than by any other single variable. There will be rising dissatisfaction with governments, no matter the party or race of the respondents, until the income gap is addressed. — Barry Anderson
We’re pretty far away from income becoming the most important variable in American politics. Although income was a defining line in American politics during the 20th century, the political gap between lower- and upper-income voters has essentially vanished during the Trump era. By some measures, the usual income gap might have even flipped in 2024, with Mr. Trump possibly becoming the first Republican to fare better among lower-income voters than upper-income ones.
That said, it was economic dissatisfaction that helped propel Mr. Trump’s gains among lower-income voters in 2024, and economic dissatisfaction is probably helping to roll those gains back. In New York Times/Siena polling over the past year, Mr. Trump’s approval rating was at 36 percent among voters making less than $50,000 per year, but 44 percent among others.
Similarly, voters making less than $50,000 per year prefer Democrats to Republicans for Congress by 12 percentage points, while the race is tied among all other voters.
Where does the blame on the economy end, and begin?
One reader suggested we ask a question about whether voters agreed with Mr. Trump’s contention that Mr. Biden was to blame for the country’s woes.
Suggested poll question: President Trump often blames former Presider Biden for many of the country’s current problems. Do you believe this criticism is fair or goes too far? — Tim Galvin, Bend, Ore.
Good news! We asked a similar question like this in our last poll: “Would you say the biggest challenges facing the U.S. economy were created by Donald Trump, Joe Biden or neither one of them?”
The result: 35 percent of voters said Mr. Biden was to blame, 31 percent said Mr. Trump, and 33 percent said neither.
Given how bad Mr. Trump’s ratings were on the economy in the same poll, that’s pretty remarkable. Still, it’s easy enough to explain: Inflation surged on Mr. Biden’s watch, not Mr. Trump’s — even if voters don’t think he’s doing enough to fix it or might even be making it worse.
Is affordability about expectations?
One common question was whether young people’s dissatisfaction about affordability simply stemmed from unrealistic presumptions.
This is a problem of expectations. Being in your mid-20s and having costs for all sorts of “experiences” that they all went to flaunt and compare across social media platforms is a big driver. Yes, life is certainly more expensive than it used to be, but expectations have certainly changed even more. — John
There’s undoubtedly some truth to this. By any historical measure, young people enjoy a very high standard of material well-being — and I would guess that many people don’t realize it. To the extent that young people are dissatisfied because they can’t flaunt wealth like social media influencers, it would certainly be fair to say that high expectations are part of the problem.
But that’s not the whole story. It might not even be most of the story. Young people say they’re frustrated by the cost of many big-ticket “middle class” essentials, like buying a home and raising a family. These aren’t unreasonable expectations — indeed it was a reasonable expectation for previous generations. So young people aren’t wrong about the problem: The price of a home, education, child care and medical care has grown much faster than incomes over the last generation.
Here, it’s worth making a distinction between someone’s material well-being — comfort, the goods they buy, their lifestyle — and whether someone can afford the fundamentals of a fulfilled, secure, middle-class life, like owning a home or raising a family and sending children to college. In recent decades, the former has gotten more affordable and the fundamentals have gotten more expensive.
Nate Cohn is The Times’s chief political analyst. He covers elections, public opinion, demographics and polling.
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