With the pivotal November elections looming, President Donald Trump’s approval rating earlier this month dropped to the lowest point of his second term—and the lowest level any President’s has reached heading into the midterms in decades.
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President → loom → decades
Trump’s approval rating fell to 30% in early October, according to polling from the Pew Research Center.
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rating → fall → Center
“This is historically low approval ratings for a President,” says Peter Enns, a professor in the department of government at Cornell University and co-founder of the survey research company Verasight.
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Enns → say → company
Data indicates that much of Americans’ dissatisfaction with the Trump Administration is being driven by the economy; according to polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, released earlier this month, only 26% of U.S. adults express support for how Trump is tackling it.
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Trump → indicate → it
Similarly, just 17% of adults in the country say they approve of how the President is addressing the cost of living, according to the AP-NORC poll.
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President → say → poll
Many adults also disagree with the Trump Administration’s war in Iran: the same AP-NORC poll found that only 28% expressed support for how Trump is handling the issue.
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Trump → disagree → issue
“Part of the reason Trump’s approval ratings are so low is he’s pushing policies and pushing positions that are very unpopular, and so the conflict in Iran is a great example; the public understands that this was Trump’s decision, and they understand this connects to extremely high gas prices,” Enns says.
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Enns → push → prices
“It’s very unusual for a President to position himself on the side of so many unpopular positions.
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President → ’ → positions
Those issues could be critical ones for voters as they go to the polls.
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they → go → polls
The Pew Research Center found that the vast majority of registered voters—84%—say that the economy is a “very important issue” for them heading into the midterms.
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economy → find → midterms
A smaller majority of 57% also deemed foreign policy “very important” to their vote in the upcoming elections.
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policy → deem → elections
Even without a historically low approval rating, midterm elections are a challenging environment for the sitting President’s party.
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elections → challenge → party
And political experts say that this year’s election looks like a difficult one for Republicans.
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election → say → Republicans
How does the President’s party typically fare in midterm elections?
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party → fare → elections
Typically, the party in the White House loses congressional seats in the midterms.
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party → lose → midterms
Enns says this is a “well-known phenomenon” that is likely a result of frustration from both a President’s supporters, who may feel that there hasn’t been enough progress on the policies they wanted to see coming out of the Administration, and those who didn’t vote for the President, who may be even more frustrated because they disagree with the Administration’s actions.
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they → say → actions
“That doesn’t mean everybody’s changing their vote,” Enns points out.
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Enns → mean → vote
“It just means the backlash, the tides, are working against the incumbent President.”
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backlash → mean → President
Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, says that a possible explanation for this historical trend is that voters may be seeking “partisan balance in Washington.”
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voters → say → Washington
When voters aren’t satisfied by policies coming out of the Administration, they may try supporting the opposition party in the midterms—particularly when one party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, as is the case with Republicans right now, Panagopoulos says.
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Panagopoulos → satisfy → Republicans
“There’s simply nobody else to blame for government actions and current policies if voters are unhappy with those besides the Republican Party [right now],” he continues.
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he → ’ → Party
“It’s very easy for [voters] to point the finger to the Republicans if they’re not happy with what they’re seeing.”
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they → ’ → what
In 2002, then-President George W. Bush’s Republican Party actually gained seats in both the House and the Senate in the midterm elections.
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Party → gain → elections
“It bucked the historical trend,” Panagopoulos says.
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Panagopoulos → buck → trend
“It’s one of the rare examples [of that].”
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It → ’ → that
Political experts like Panagopoulos largely attribute the GOP’s success in the 2002 midterms to Bush’s high approval rating—63% heading into the midterms, according to Gallup data—in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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experts → attribute → attacks
There have also been some instances when the opposition party was expected to win big in the midterms but fell short of those predictions.
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party → expect → predictions
Going into the 2022 midterms, for instance, then-President Joe Biden’s approval rating sat at 40%, according to Gallup polling, and Republicans were widely expected to see major victories in the election.
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Republicans → go → election
And while the GOP gained nine seats in the House, that wasn’t as substantial a win as many had predicted—and Democrats actually gained a seat in the Senate
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Democrats → gain → Senate
Panagopoulos suggests that part of the reason for that could be because Biden’s approval rating wasn’t at a historic low.
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rating → suggest → low
He also points out that 2022 was the first election cycle with newly drawn district lines, which also could have affected the results.
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which → point → results
Michele Swers, a professor of American government at Georgetown University, puts forth another explanation: the 2022 midterms took place just a few months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which may have harmed Republicans' advantage in the election.
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which → put → election
“Sometimes, the political environment can intervene,” Swers says.
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Swers → intervene → ?
How can a President’s approval rating affect the midterm elections?
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rating → affect → elections
Swers likens the midterm elections to “a referendum on how things are going with the presidency.”
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things → liken → presidency
“The President is the one figure that everybody in the nation knows,” she says.
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she → know → nation
While the President himself isn’t on the ballot in the midterms, “in general, the President loses seats because people are angry with the President, and they take that out on the President’s party because the President is also the leader of their party.”
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President → lose → party
Panagopoulos says that a President’s approval rating is “among the best predictors of outcomes in midterm election cycles” because it encapsulates “a wide range of sentiments about how voters perceive the performance of the incumbent party or president.”
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voters → say → party
And Panagopoulos adds that the lower the President’s approval rating is, the greater the likelihood that his party will lose more congressional seats in the midterms.
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party → add → midterms
Political experts agree that Republicans are grappling with a difficult political climate right now.
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Republicans → agree → climate
…and 11 more, not listed.
The Aporia
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