Nearly 2 in 3 Americans say President Donald Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself — and most of the increase over the past year has come from people who lean Republican, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
Among Republicans and independents who lean Republican, 34 percent believe Trump is enriching himself, up from 22 percent in September 2025. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were already nearly unanimous, at 88 percent a year ago and 92 percent now, while independents who don’t lean toward either party were unchanged.
The notable shift comes less than three weeks before the midterm elections, as Democrats are closing with a message accusing Trump and Republicans of flagrant corruption and tying self-dealing to the high cost of living. In competitive congressional and governor’s races, Democrats have spent nearly twice as much as Republicans on ads about tackling corruption in Washington — though few of those ads directly accuse Trump of enriching himself.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Trump’s aides have said his financial situation has worsened since he has been in office, and Trump told reporters that his financial gains in a summer financial disclosure reflected an improved stock market.
To win the House and Senate, Democrats will need to sway voters like Matthew Brumbaugh, 42, of Ohio, who voted for Trump in 2024. Brumbaugh has come to regret it as he’s watched the war with Iran unfold and endured higher prices at the grocery store and gas station.
Brumbaugh, an independent who leans Republican, said he’s undecided in Ohio’s hotly contested Senate race but is considering backing a Democrat for the first time, in hopes of reining in Trump.
“He’s using his power to extremes,” Brumbaugh said.
Corruption concerns are nothing new — Republicans made the Biden family a focus of their attacks in the last election cycle — and many Americans are skeptical of both parties. More than 4 in 10 in the Post-ABC-Ipsos poll said neither party could be trusted to reduce corruption in government.
Still, Democrats hold a narrow edge. About one-third overall said Democrats would do a better job of reducing corruption, compared with about one-quarter who chose Republicans.
Another poll from Fox News last week also found the issue had high traction. In the poll, government corruption topped voters’ concerns, even more than inflation or gas prices.
Democrats, who have promised in speeches and interviews to hold Trump accountable if they win control of Congress, have seized on Trump’s ties to the nation’s wealthiest individuals, the high net worth of his Cabinet, and his family’s cryptocurrency and foreign business deals, which have significantly increased Trump’s wealth during his second term.
In interviews, speeches and national ads, Democrats have cast Trump as distracted by pet projects like the White House ballroom and putting his name on the Kennedy Center.
Meanwhile, Republicans have their own anti-corruption pitch: Vice President JD Vance is leading an administration task force to root out fraud in government programs, and high-spend GOP ads on corruption have portrayed Democrats as career politicians who don’t care about voters.
But Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist, said the party has struggled to talk about corruption in a way that resonates, while voters hear Trump talk frequently about White House renovations and the war with Iran.
“Every single day the president is talking about vanity projects, he’s talking about ownership of companies? How do you message around that? The short answer is you don’t,” Bartlett said.
Adam Bozzi — a Democratic strategist and adviser to Defend the Vote, a progressive PAC focused on voting access — said his group has urged Democratic candidates to tie affordability to corruption. Bozzi cautioned that candidates should tailor the message to their audiences, focusing on specific policies where they resonate, such as the administration’s support for data centers at a time when tech titans have given Republicans money. Democrats should also promise to go after corruption evenhandedly, whether it involves Trump or anyone else, he said.
“Donald Trump is giving lots of things to point to as examples of corruption, and in some districts it’s helpful to really hone in on that, and in others it’s not,” Bozzi said.
So far, Democrats in battleground House, Senate and gubernatorial races have largely kept their corruption message broad: Only 1 percent of corruption-related ad spending in those areas has gone to ads accusing Trump specifically of enriching himself, according to a Washington Post analysis of AdImpact data through Oct. 12.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) spoke with The Post on Thursday from Tennessee, where he was campaigning for state Rep. Justin Pearson, the Democratic nominee in a redrawn solid-red 9th Congressional District. Murphy said he had worried that the corruption message wasn’t breaking through, but he is starting to see movement on the right that he predicts could affect turnout.
“I’ve been surprised that even Trump’s most hardened supporters are having doubts for the first time in 10 years about Trump,” Murphy said. “What I think is going to happen is there are going to be some Trump people who are just going to stay home. They would still vote for him, but they’re not going to come out in a midterm election just because he asks.”
Lisa Lewis, a 61-year-old retiree in New York, once considered herself an ardent Trump fan. She sighed as she recalled how excited she had been to send him to Washington after he promised to end wars and release the Epstein files. She is convinced, she said, that Trump has profited off the war with Iran, and that he is wasting time and taxpayers’ money on vanity projects like the ballroom, the Kennedy Center and the renaming of Lake Ontario.
“I voted for him, and I was so pro-Trump, and I was so thrilled about the whole thing,” she said. “Now, I’m just disgusted.”
The post Poll finds jump in Republicans who say Trump is enriching himself appeared first on Washington Post.
