WHERE TRUMP STANDS NOW. With off-year elections on Tuesday and with an eye toward next year’s midterm elections, we have a new round of polls about President Donald Trump, the government shutdown, and the state of national politics. The Washington Post/ABC News, NBC News, NewsNation, CBS News, and more — they all have new surveys on Trump’s popularity and more.
At this point, some of you will say that you don’t believe any polls, that they’re all garbage, that the only poll you pay attention to is on Election Day, etc. Sorry — I think that, while no poll by itself should be taken as gospel, it is worthwhile — not dispositive, but worthwhile — to look at them in aggregate, as, say, RealClearPolitics does.
First, the shutdown. Looking at the polls, you can see why Democrats have dug in so deeply to keep the government closed. The Washington Post poll asked, “Who do you think is mainly responsible for the federal government shutting down?” Forty-five percent said Trump and Republicans in Congress, while 33% said Democrats in Congress. In the NBC poll, 52% said Trump and Republicans are responsible, while 42% said Democrats.
Start with who is, in fact, responsible for the shutdown. A few days ago, Fox News’s Brit Hume, who has covered plenty of shutdowns, explained it this way: “The gold standard for ending a shutdown has been a clean continuing resolution. … That is what the Republicans have passed in the House, that is what they sent to the Senate, and that is what Senate Democrats have blocked using the filibuster.” It’s hard to be clearer than that: The Democrats are keeping the government shut down.
So why the poll results primarily blaming Republicans? Two possible reasons. One is simply muscle memory. The public is used to blaming Republicans for government shutdowns, and they’re doing it again now. The other is Trump — a portion of the public is used to blaming everything on the president, and they’re doing it in the shutdown. Put it all together, and at least a plurality blames the GOP and Trump, regardless of who is actually blocking the bill to reopen the government.
On to Trump’s job approval. The Washington Post/ABC poll has Trump at 43% approval and 57% disapproval among registered voters. NBC has him at 43% approval and 55% disapproval. NewsNation has him at 43% approval and 56% disapproval. And CBS has him at 41% approval and 59% disapproval.
Put them together, and they are basically in line with the RealClearPolitics average of those and other polls: 43.7% approval and 53.6% disapproval. It is not terribly hard to believe that Trump’s job approval rating is around 43% — it has spent much of the year bouncing around in the 44%-45% range, so a dip to 43% is not surprising. And it is significantly better than his approval in the RealClearPolitics average at this point in his first term, which was 39%.
On the coming midterm elections, nearly all the polls show that a plurality of respondents would prefer that Democrats, rather than Republicans, control Congress. The Washington Post poll shows Democrats with a 46%-44% advantage over Republicans, NBC has the advantage at 50%-42%, and the NewsNation poll has the parties tied at 47%-47%. In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Democrats have a 3.6-percentage-point advantage, 46.2% to 42.6%.
The elections are a year away, so the numbers could change significantly — who knows what is going to happen in the next 365 days? On the other hand, it is normal for a president’s party to lose seats in midterm elections, especially if the president’s job approval rating is well below 50%. The problem for Trump and Republicans is that with a narrow margin of control in the House, they have very, very few seats to lose.
There are a couple of other numbers, about the public’s view of Trump and conditions in the U.S., that are worth mentioning. The Washington Post poll asked which political player — Trump, the Republicans, or the Democrats — is “in touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today.” Nobody scored terribly well, but more people, 36%, said Trump is in touch than said the Democratic Party, 30%, is in touch. The same went for the Republican Party, 37%, versus the Democrats, 30%. When you hear commentators say Democrats are out of touch, that’s something many, many people believe.
Finally, the NBC survey asked the traditional right-track, wrong-track question: Do you think the country is on the right track or the wrong track? The result was that 37% said the country is on the right track. That is down from March, but it is still higher than the right track number of any NBC poll taken at any time during the Biden administration, when the right track fell to as low as 16% in May 2022. People are unhappy about plenty of issues right now, but they know things are better than under the previous president.