A prominent Republican pollster has bad news for President Trump ahead of midterm elections.
With November approaching, Trump’s overall approval rating now sits at just 40 percent, according to The New York Times daily polling average. His disapproval stands at a whopping 56 percent. It’s the lowest point of his second term, a dip that a well-known Republican pollster says should set off alarms inside his own party.
“He is currently at his lowest point in the second term. There’s a sense that this is a pretty chaotic administration and seems to remind people of the pandemic period in the first term,” Whit Ayres told Politico. He noted that presidential approval ratings have historically been predictive of midterm results.
“When it’s above 50 percent, the party loses seats but not that many. When the president’s job approval is below, the average loss of seats is 32.”
Ayres said the trajectory mirrors Trump’s first four years, when sustained controversy and upheaval wore down public patience.
“Joe Biden’s fundamental message in 2020 was to restore normalcy,” Ayres said. “And that seemed to be persuasive to enough people to get him elected.”
The poor polling is racking up for Trump. A trio of recent surveys suggest that his popularity is plummeting, and the latest finds that 46 percent think Biden did a better job, compared with 40 percent who favor Trump’s second stab at running the country.
The new YouGov/Economist collection follows a Rasmussen Reports poll a few days earlier and a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll a couple of days before that.
Harvard’s ran from Jan. 28–29 and found that 51 percent of registered voters thought Trump was doing a worse job. Rasmussen’s, which ran from Feb. 2–4, returned results from probable voters showing that 48 percent said Biden did a better job, while 40 percent said Trump did.
Trump has baselessly insisted that he is polling well—despite no credible polls finding he has a positive approval rating—and raged at pollsters who report negative views about his administration.
In January, he announced he would sue the New York Times/Siena poll for finding that his numbers were tanking on everything from immigration to his handling of the Epstein files.
These issues, and new ones exclusive to year two of Trump 2.0, have rankled voters. His administration’s deadly ICE raids in Minnesota saw public favor edge away from the president, as did his military operations in the Caribbean, Venezuela, and Iran. Trump campaigned on an “America First” message.
His knee-jerk and verbose approach to the economy often roils the markets, too. “Even proposals that don’t ultimately move forward have consequences,” a financial industry insider told Politico. “Markets react. Issuers reassess risk. When policymakers float price controls, it creates uncertainty that can translate into tighter underwriting and reduced access—particularly for higher-risk or lower-income consumers.”
The White House has been contacted for comment.
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