President Donald Trump is claiming that voters are angry with Republicans—but not with him.
In an interview with Punchbowl News released on Friday, the President asserted that he gets “a tremendous vote,” while expressing concerns about support for his party.
“If I don’t run, will those people go out and vote?” Trump said.
“The question is, will they vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you,” he continued. “They’re not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans.”
According to a New York Times/Siena poll conducted in May, about 64% of registered voters are dissatisfied with the Republican Party, including 23% of Republicans. The poll also found that, while the President is generally popular among voters in his party, there are many who want the GOP to move away from Trump: about 55% of potential Republican supporters said that they want the party’s next presidential candidate to follow in Trump’s footsteps, whereas 37% said that they want the next candidate to shift away from him.
And despite Trump’s claim that voters aren’t angry with him, his approval stands at just 33%, according to AP-NORC polling from July, a drop of 4 percentage points from June and far below where it was when he returned to the Oval Office for a second term last January. Support for Trump among Republicans remains high, though, with 73% approving of how he’s handling the job and just 27% disapproving.
The President has brushed off his low polling numbers as having been “made up by the Fake News Media.”
“My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been,” Trump claimed in a Truth Social post on Monday. “Don’t believe the Radical Left’s Fake Poll Numbers. They are Crooked and Corrupt, just like the Country Destroying Dumocrats are Crooked and Corrupt. VOTE REPUBLICAN FOR GREATNESS IN AMERICA!”
Recent surveys have indicated that Democrats are leading over Republicans on generic ballots, with just a few months before the pivotal November midterm elections. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week found that 42% of registered voters said they would cast their ballot for a Democratic congressional candidate if the midterms were held that day, while 37% would back a Republican congressional candidate.
A recent CNN/SSRS poll also suggested that support is higher for Democrats than it is for Republicans: when asked which party’s congressional candidate they would vote for if an election were taking place that day, 47% of registered voters said they would back the Democrat, compared to just 39% who said they would cast their ballot for the Republican. That 8-point difference is up from a 5-point gap between the two parties that was marked by CNN in January.
Read More: Democrats Lead Republicans in Polls Three Months Ahead of Midterms
While Republicans have historically won over some voters on their economic policies, that advantage over Democrats appears to have diminished in recent months, partly as a result of the economic consequences of Trump’s tariffs and his war in Iran. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week revealed that, for the first time in years, more U.S. adults said that Democrats have a better strategy for the economy than those who said that Republicans do. And the majority of U.S. adults—64%—say they think that the war in the Middle East has not been worthwhile, including 37% of Republicans, according to an AP-NORC poll released in July.
Some Republicans in the Senate have expressed concerns that Trump could be a liability to the party in the midterms. There has been simmering tension between the President and members of his own party over several issues during his second term—Trump has publicly shared his frustrations with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for instance, over the fact that the restrictive voter ID bill that the President has aggressively championed has stalled in the upper chamber.
Still, in his interview with Punchbowl News, Trump indicated that he would have his super PAC roll out funds to his party in the upcoming midterms.
“I’m going to help Republicans,” he said.
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