Increasingly, eyes are on the midterm elections. Democrats are confident because the “out” party nearly always gains in the midterms, and they see Donald Trump as an unpopular president against whom they can run.
Are they right? Rasmussen polls likely voters continuously and with consistent methodology and is therefore a good barometer. Its surveys document President Trump’s decline. This is his approval rating, on a three-day rolling basis. It currently stands at 45%:
Rasmussen also publishes its Approval Index, which is the difference between the president’s “strongly approve” and “strongly disapprove” numbers. There are many more voters who strongly disapprove of Trump than who strongly approve of him, and the gap is growing:
So Democrats are correct when they say that Trump is an unpopular president.
However. An obvious question is, how does he compare with Joe Biden at the same stage of Biden’s term? The answer is, Trump is doing better. In January 2022, after one year in office, Biden’s approval/disapproval in Rasmussen’s poll stood at 40%/58%, five points lower than Trump’s current rating.
For Biden, it did get better: over the following three years he scored as high as 48% approval. When he sought re-election in the Summer of 2024 but was yanked from the race by his party, Rasmussen had him at 44%, almost the same as where Trump is now.
In today’s world, there is essentially no such thing as a popular president. Our voters are not only split approximately 50/50, but the divide is deep. Few in either party are willing to approve of an enemy president. And in both parties, there are enthusiasts who disapprove of any actual office-holder as too moderate. So we are in an era in which the concept of a popular president is more or less obsolete.
I think that means that the essential political task for any president is to hang on to his base. If 45% of voters say they approve of him, that is about as well as he is going to do. In that sense, President Trump is on track. And maybe the sound economic policies his administration has put in place will cause his approval to rise a bit over the next year or two.
In the meantime, however, the Democrats hold most of the cards for the midterms. Republicans face the worst of two worlds. A friend said to me yesterday: Trump isn’t always on our ballot, but he is always on theirs. A not-insignificant number of Trump fans will stay home, with Trump not on the ballot. But Trump-haters, a category that includes all Democrats and some independents, will be champing at the bit to vote.
So I hope Mike Johnson, John Thune and Donald Trump have a plan to achieve every possible legislative victory between now and January 2027. Because from that time on, in all likelihood, Republicans will be fending off investigations of the Trump administration and impeachments of President Trump by a Democratic House of Representatives.
