By
Ed Kilgore,
political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
As Donald Trump focuses on crushing dissension in the Republican Party, his standing among the American people generally continues to fester. His job-approval ratings have dropped below 40 percent in the RealClearPolitics averages and reached 38.4 percent in the Silver Bulletin averages. The president’s net job approval is now deeply underwater: minus-17 percent at RCP and minus-20.1 percent at Silver Bulletin. But perhaps more important, with the midterm elections less than six months away, Democrats are beginning to open up a significant lead in the generic congressional polling that measures voting intentions in U.S. House elections.
Looking at Democrats’ polling over the second Trump term, they’ve hit new highs for in the generic ballot margin at both RCP (7.2 percent advantage) and Silver Bulletin (6.6 percent advantage). By way of context, Republicans won the 2024 national House popular vote by 2.6 percent and the 2022 national House popular vote by 2.7 percent. In both elections, that translated to a very small margin of control in the House (five seats in 2024 and seven in 2022). In the first-term Trump midterms in 2018, Democrats won the national House popular vote by 8.6 percent, winning control of the House by a margin of 35 seats.
