With fewer than 50 days until the midterms, Democrats have developed a clear advantage over Republicans as the president has lost the public’s trust on the economy, according to a new national poll from The New York Times and Siena University.
President Trump’s deep, lingering unpopularity and intense frustration over his management of cost-of-living issues, in particular, have deepened Republican vulnerabilities as Democrats push to win control of both the House and Senate.
Likely voters favored Democratic candidates over Republicans by just under 9 percentage points in their congressional district — a metric that is closely watched by both parties as a leading indicator of political momentum.
Mr. Trump’s approval rating continued to languish at 38 percent among likely voters, essentially unchanged from the lows it sank to after he went to war with Iran.
A majority of voters disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of every major issue included in the poll: the economy, immigration, tariffs, the war and, especially, the cost of living.
And voters said they trusted Democrats more than Republicans on not just health care and foreign wars but also on the two issues that powered Mr. Trump’s 2024 victory: immigration and the economy.
The political conditions found by the poll suggest the makings of a potential Democratic wave in November.
But that outcome is far from assured.
Thanks in part to gerrymandering, relatively few House seats are truly competitive, and in the run-up to the midterms, Republicans drew new House maps in several states favorable to their candidates. And even a 9-point advantage would not guarantee flipping some of the Senate seats Democrats are counting on in 2026 — Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa — which Mr. Trump won by double digits in 2024.
Still, independent voters have especially soured on Mr. Trump. Just 10 percent of them said the economy was better today than a year ago and only 27 percent approve of Mr. Trump’s job performance overall. And in the fight for Congress, 57 percent of independent voters said they planned to vote for a Democrat compared to only 34 percent for a Republican.
The cost of living is dragging down Republicans more than any other issue, as even some Republican voters lose faith in Mr. Trump’s economy. Only 28 percent of voters said they approved of how Mr. Trump has managed matters related to affordability.
Even Mr. Trump’s most loyal and durable demographic base — white voters without college degrees — disapproved of the president’s handling of the cost of living by a wide 21-percentage point margin.
And opposition to Mr. Trump is intensifying.
The survey was the first Times/Siena poll in his second term to find a majority of voters, 52 percent, saying that they “strongly” disapproved of him.
The war in Iran, which has driven gas prices above $4 a gallon, is also weighing down the president. More than three-quarters of independent voters said that they disapproved of his handling of the conflict, and so did nearly a quarter of Mr. Trump’s own 2024 voters.
Yet the survey found that the G.O.P.’s vulnerabilities extend beyond Mr. Trump.
Voters see Republicans broadly as more extreme, more elitist and more corrupt than Democrats, according to the poll.
And while voters continue to have doubts about both parties, they aligned more with the Democratic Party on both cultural and economic matters than the Republican Party in the survey.
One glimmer of good news for Republicans is that the political situation has not deteriorated further since the spring. Yes, Mr. Trump is unpopular. But he is not more so than he was five months ago. The Democratic Party is viewed as too far left. And Republicans are generally outpolling Mr. Trump — including on how they would handle particular issues.
Still, by an 11-point margin, voters said they would prefer for Democrats to control Congress after the November election.
“All I know is right now, the Republicans are in power and I’m not really seeing the change I wanted to see,” said Elizabeth Gloden, 21, an independent college student in Arizona who voted for Mr. Trump in 2024 but is planning to vote Democratic this year. “I’m Gen Z. I am in the area where we want to move out of our parents’ houses, but we can’t because everything costs a million dollars,” she added. “I think it’d be a good idea to just see the other side what they can do.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/us/politics/trump-midterm-election-poll.html