With less than six weeks until the November midterm elections, a plurality of American voters say their upcoming congressional vote will be "mainly a vote against President (Donald) Trump," according to a new Marist University poll.
In the NPR and PBS News-sponsored poll, released Sept. 23, 45% of registered voters described their midterm vote as primarily a "vote against President Trump
than a vote for him."A majority of independents, 54%, said their vote was "a vote against" the president, with an overwhelming majority of Democrats, 80%, sharing the same sentiment. Among Republicans, 35% said the president did not factor into their vote in November.
That plurality of voters coincides with a large Democratic lead in the generic congressional
ballot. According to the newest poll, Democrats hold a lead of 12 percentage points over the GOP, up 2 points from the same poll in May.
According to Marist University, the poll was conducted among 1,280 respondents from Sept. 14 to Sept. 15 with a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.
Democrats more trusted, poll shows
Voters’ rebuke of the president comes as his party looks to hold slim majorities in both the House and the Senate.
According to the poll, voters said they trusted Democrats over the GOP to manage the economy, foreign policy, gas prices, and, very narrowly, immigration. For immigration, 41% said they trusted Democrats while 38% gave Republicans the nod.
For Democrats, it is an 11-point improvement from 2024, when only 30% said they would do better than Republicans.
Voters’ trust in Democrats' handling of gas prices comes as the national average price of a gallon sits at $4.47, according to the AAA. That price marks an 11-cent jump from a week ago and a 38-cent increase from a month ago.
Trump approval staggers along
The September poll found Trump’s approval rating sitting at 39%, a 1-point improvement from its June poll. Despite the improvement, 53% of voters strongly disapproved of the president's job, which Marist University said shows an “electorate with hardened, high-intensity views rather than soft or persuadable ones.”
Trump’s approval rating in the new survey came on the heels of two bruising polls for the president.
On Sept. 22, a new Economist/YouGov poll found that his approval rating had fallen 5 points in a single week, from 40% to 35%, wiping out five straight weeks of gains in the same poll. That drop left the president just 2 points above the lowest rating he's ever recorded in the survey.
Then, a day before, on Sept. 21, an even worse poll saw Trump sink to the lowest approval rating of his political career in Reuters/Ipsos tracking. According to the poll, only 32% of Americans approved of Trump's job performance, a 3-point drop from the previous edition.
Trump’s 32% approval rating in the Sept. 21 poll set a new record low across both of his terms in office. Previously, Trump’s floor was 33%, which he reached in December 2017 and held for three consecutive weeks this August.
What do polling averages show?
While individual polls vary, major polling averages continue to place Trump in negative territory overall:
- RealClearPolitics (Sept. 23): 39% approve, 59.5% disapprove
- New York Times (Sept. 23): 37% approve, 60% disapprove
- Silver Bulletin (Sept. 23): 37.6% approve, 59.9% disapprove
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@usatodayco.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Many voters see midterms as vote against Trump, new poll finds
