Election Day 2026 will be an Independents' Day
The new Gallup poll underscores the president's precarious position with swing voters.
For all the problems that Democrats face, and there are many, their challenges pale in comparison to those now facing Republicans with 11 months to go until the midterms.
The circumstances could hardly be more different than those in 2024. The last election was mostly about President Biden and the Biden-Harris administration, with the cost of living being their biggest liability. But as each day passes, Biden and Harris have less ownership of these problems while President Trump and his party take on more. Midterm elections are almost always about the person in the White House and the party in power, not about who used to occupy the Oval Office or a party with no power.
One danger for a president’s party in midterm elections is that its partisans are at best complacent or at worst disillusioned. MAGA Republicans could be disappointed in Trump’s handling of the economy, and the effect of tariffs on the cost of living. An America First-er could be growing increasingly uncomfortable with the possibility of military involvement in Venezuela. Someone who found their way to Trump via QAnon is likely turned off by his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein affair. But Republican voters (or non-voters) are not the biggest challenge for the GOP next year. It’s independents.
It is important to keep in mind that Democratic, Republican, and independent voters are not evenly distributed across every state and district. Republican voters are disproportionately found in red, GOP-tilting states and districts, just as Democrats reside in Democratic-tilting states and districts. While there are many fewer actual swing voters nationally, they are vastly overrepresented in purple states and districts. As a result, in the purple states and districts that are host to the vast majority of the competitive races that will decide which party has Senate and House majorities and how big those majorities will be, it is independents’ approval of the president and their perception of the economy that can be determinative.
In 2024, those independents were at least disappointed but more often angry with the Biden-Harris administration, particularly on cost-of-living issues. This election, however, will be about the stewardship of the Trump-J.D. Vance administration. In the Gallup poll for the month of November released late Thursday, Trump’s overall approval rating dropped another 5 points to 36 percent (60 percent disapproved). But more damaging to the GOP’s prospects was the fact that among independents his approval rating declined to 25 percent (68 percent disapproved)—14 points below what it was during his first weeks in office.
Simply put, the last 10 months have not been the cruise that these independent voters signed up for. Saber rattling at Venezuela, stripping many federal programs and undermining vaccines, bulldozing the East Wing of the White House, and dissuading the best STEM minds in the world from pursuing graduate programs in the U.S., to name just a few, were not top-of-mind concerns when they cast their ballots 11 months ago. Just as Biden and Democrats misinterpreted their victory in 2020, Trump has done that in 2024.
The irony is that even when Trump gets ahead of Democrats on an issue, he pushes it too hard or in such a clumsy way that he negates any benefit of having been “right.” On immigration, swing voters felt that Biden and Democrats had ignored their concerns about illegal crossings over the U.S.-Mexico border, but rather than going after criminals, Trump is going after nannies, farm workers, dishwashers, and others with no criminal background other than being in the U.S. without documentation.
The president was underwater (with more disapprovals than approvals) in all nine issues the Gallup poll tested. A whopping 60 percent or more disapproved on five of them.
Trump’s worst showing was a 30 percent approval rating on health policy (63 percent disapproved), followed by two issues with 31 percent approval levels: the federal budget (64 percent disapproved) and the situation in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Palestinians (58 percent disapproved).
Matching his 36 percent overall approval was the assessment of his handling the economy (62 percent disapproval). He outperformed his overall approval on immigration (37 percent approving, 62 percent disapproving), foreign trade (39 percent approving, 58 percent disapproving), foreign affairs (41 percent approving, 56 percent disapproving), and crime (43 percent approving, 52 percent disapproving).
It is pretty clear that Trump’s mid-decade gerrymandering play is not going to build the cushion Republicans wanted in red states to help them retain their House majority. While it’s conceivable that it could backfire and cost them seats, it’s more likely to make little difference at all. Each party will simply have the chance to elect its own rubber-stamp members, making an already dysfunctional House even more so, no matter who ends up in charge.
If Republicans can keep their net losses under 15 seats, they will be lucky, but that’s only because the battlefield is now so narrow. If the playing field of competitive districts were anything like it was 20 or 30 years ago, they would be staring at losses potentially three times that. The worst-case scenario for Republicans now would probably be losses in the 20-to-25-seat range. Just remember, when a party is having a bad night in the House, it almost always gets bigger and goes deeper than expected, and the individual race count often underestimates what can happen when a party has a very unpopular president.