Democrats Can’t Rely on Trump’s Struggles

It’s no secret that Donald Trump’s political fortunes have taken a dip. After starting his second term with a strong net approval of +11.6 points, it took less than 100 days to fall into net negative territory. Some recent surveys even suggested that his approval rating had hit the lowest 100-day mark of any president in the polling era.

Trump’s struggles have engendered some schadenfreude in his critics, including the Democrats. At a media briefing last month, when asked whether the party was too focused on the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries responded by simply mocking Trump’s dreary polling. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has similarly touted the polls as evidence that Americans are “fed up” with Trump.

There’s nothing new about parties and politicians taking glee in the misfortunes of their opponents, but Democrats can’t assume that Trump’s current woes will last forever—or that their party will necessarily benefit from them.

Though Trump’s standing has fallen, recent polling shows the Democrats are in even worse shape at the moment. In the latest Economist/YouGov survey, just 33 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the party compared to 42 percent for Trump. On net, Trump’s favorability stood at -11 points compared to -20 for Democrats. And whereas Trump’s approval rating mirrored his favorability at 42 percent, it was even worse for Jeffries (30 percent) and Schumer (23 percent).

Part of Democrats’ struggle has been unifying their own party: 76 percent of self-identified Democrats view the party favorably while one-in-five (21 percent) do not.¹ But they are also deeply underwater with all-important independent voters: a meager 21 percent have a favorable view of the party, a far lower share than said the same for Trump (35 percent) and Republicans, too (23 percent).

It’s also worth remembering that despite Trump ending his first term as one of the least popular presidents ever, voters decided to put him back in the White House after four years of Democratic governance under Joe Biden, whose own average approval during his term was the second-lowest for any president in the polling era behind only Trump. Moreover, Trump did even better in his second electoral victory, winning the popular vote (which he failed to do in 2016) and building on his Electoral College performance, indicating a greater share of the country was behind him than before.

Trump’s recent polling dip has largely been driven by his failure to adequately address what was voters’ top concern in the election and remains atop their minds today: inflation. Voters are now more than twice as likely to say his policies, rather than Biden’s, are responsible for the state of the economy today. This may offer Democrats their best chance to make inroads against him with some of the voters they’ve lost.

Rather than keep their eye on the ball, however, they’ve continued to play whack-a-mole in response to everything else Trump has done, leaving them looking undisciplined. Meanwhile, there is good reason to think that if Trump lets up on his trade war and puts people’s minds at ease about their cost-of-living fears, he could bounce back in popularity. Indeed, his average net approval has recently recovered a bit: after falling from a seemingly inexorable decline to -9.7 two weeks ago, it has ticked back up three points to -6.7 today—a sign that he may have a longer leash with voters this time around.

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Of course, all this doesn’t spell immediate doom for Democrats. The midterms are still over a year away, and a year is a lifetime in politics. Though their base, which is increasingly made up of higher-turnout voters, may be frustrated by what they see as a lackluster response to Trump from their leaders, this isn’t likely to prevent them from showing up in 2026 to support Democratic candidates—especially in pursuit of flipping one or both chambers of Congress to secure a more robust check on Trump.

Democrats are also likely to benefit from historical trends: the “out party” typically makes substantial gains in midterm elections, especially when the president’s approval rating is in negative territory. It would be very unexpected—and truly harrowing—if the Democrats didn’t make any gains next fall.

Still, the party’s weak standing is a sobering reminder that they cannot take anything for granted right now. And even if they do well in next year’s midterms, the bigger challenge awaits in 2028: how to convince voters to entrust them with the power of the presidency once again. If they don’t have an answer to that, they may be poised for some pain for a while to come.

Editor’s note: A version of this essay originally appeared in UnHerd.

1. This leaves them with a net approval of 55 points. By comparison, 81 percent of self-identified Republicans had a favorable view of the GOP versus just 13 percent who did not—a net approval of 68 points.