CNN
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Democrats are sounding the alarm over a cluster of recent polls showing that the party’s public image is more bruised and battered than at any point in decades.
Those poor ratings from voters may signal long-term problems for the party if they persist through the 2028 presidential campaign. But the negative reviews probably won’t have nearly as much impact on the upcoming elections in 2025 and 2026 as many analysts in both parties are anticipating.
Looking across recent midterm elections, there’s no evidence that such broad measures of party favorability have influenced the outcome in any consistent way. For instance, the Democrats’ image in most polls was at least as favorable as (and sometimes more favorable than) the Republicans’ in both 2010 and 2014 — and the GOP achieved historic landslides in those midterm elections anyway.
The best evidence shows that attitudes toward the incumbent president are now exerting far more influence on midterm election results than views about the party out of the White House. What’s more, the historical record suggests the best way for the opposition party to raise its own standing is to weaken the president’s position.
That means the Democrats’ best chance to recover before 2026 likely depends less on their efforts to refurbish their own image than on their ability to crystallize public discontent with the actions by President Donald Trump and the Republicans who control both chambers of Congress.
“The Democratic party having the lowest negative rating in 30 years has consequence, but midterm elections are about the status of the economy, direction of the country, and presidential approval,” said longtime Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “Trump’s job approval before the election will tell us a lot more about the outcome of 2026 than the rating of the Democratic party.”
The White House gave a clear sign last week that it agreed when Trump forced an obviously reluctant Elise Stefanik to withdraw her nomination as UN ambassador for fear of losing either her seat or one of the vacant Republican-held Florida seats during special elections this year. Needless to say, for all the teeth-gnashing among Democrats, the White House would not have taken such an unusual step if it believed the other party’s poor image rendered it unelectable in the months ahead.
For weeks, Democrats have been rattled by polls showing the party’s public image has hit its lowest point in decades. A recent NBC poll (conducted by McInturff’s firm, Public Opinion Strategies, and a Democratic partner) found just 27% of Americans viewed Democrats favorably, the lowest rating that poll has recorded for the party since 1990. The latest CNN/SRSS poll similarly found just 29% of adults holding a favorable view of the Democrats — also the lowest that survey (and earlier Gallup Polls) had found since 1992.
One reason Democrats’ ratings have plummeted is that an unusually large share of the party’s own voters are unhappy with it — a reflection of the widespread frustration that the party’s national leadership has not formulated a more effective opposition to Trump. But the Democrats’ decline also reflects brutally low ratings among independents.
These dismal readings have inevitably triggered end-is-near style warnings from many Democrats, particularly those who believe the party in recent years has tilted too far to the left. Democrats are “truly in a deep hole,” Ruy Teixeira, a longtime Democratic analyst who has become an unremitting critic of the party, wrote recently. “The party’s severe image, identification, governance, and geographic weaknesses cannot be remedied by mounting the (rhetorical) barricades against Trump and waiting for his administration to self-destruct.”
Election trends in the Trump era indeed offer Democrats plenty of reason for concern about their long-term trajectory. The party has become uncompetitive in what many strategists consider an unsustainably large number of states, and the 2024 presidential results showed substantial movement toward Trump among non-White men and younger White men, as well as some erosion among Latina women. If those geographic and demographic trends harden, Democrats will face an increasingly difficult climb to piece together majorities in the Senate or the Electoral College.
But history suggests the cries of imminent doom for Democrats significantly overstates the near-term risks the party faces from its weakened public image. In elections through this century, the public’s view of the party outside of the White House has not been nearly as strong a predictor of the results in the midterms as their assessment of the performance of the president and his party.
Voter choices in the midterm are “more a reaction to the party in the White House,” said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist. “How people feel about the out-party is probably not that important because if they are not happy with what is going on they are going to blame it on the president’s party and the president, and they are going to vote against them. That’s why the president’s party almost always loses seats.” Indeed, as I’ve written, no president has defended unified control of the White House and Congress through a midterm election since 1978 — the longest such stretch in US history.
At times, the public’s general attitudes toward the two parties have seemed to presage the midterm results. The clearest example was in 2006, when substantially more Americans in Gallup polling expressed a favorable view of the Democratic Party (52%) than the GOP (37%) — a result that foreshadowed big Democratic gains in both chambers on Election Day.
The relationship wasn’t quite as direct, but in 2022, the fact that voters were also mostly negative on Republicans (especially after the Supreme Court decision rescinding the constitutional right to abortion) helped Democrats to contain their losses in House elections and gain ground in the Senate, despite the pervasive discontent with President Joe Biden’s job performance.
But more often in midterm elections, the relative favorability of the two parties has not been a reliable indicator of the outcome.
In 2018, for instance, Republicans were viewed favorably by almost exactly as many voters as Democrats in polling by Gallup and NBC that fall, and by only slightly fewer voters than Democrats in CNN’s survey closest to election day. Yet the GOP lost 41 House seats in the election.
In 2014, the Democrats’ public image was considerably more positive than the Republicans’ in polling that fall from Gallup and what was then the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. But in the election, Democrats lost 13 seats in the House and a crushing nine in the Senate.
The most dramatic divergence came in 2010. The Gallup and CNN polls that fall showed that the share of voters viewing each party favorably and unfavorably was almost identical; the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll actually put Democrats in a slightly stronger position. Yet on Election Day, Republicans gained six seats in the Senate and 63 in the House — the biggest mid-term gain for either party since 1938.
The common thread in these consecutive midterm routs was widespread discontent with the president. In Gallup polling, the approval rating for President Barack Obama in 2010 and 2014, and for Trump in 2018, all stood at just 42% to 45%, with most Americans disapproving of their performance.
To many analysts, those judgments about the incumbent president have become the crucial factor in shaping midterm elections. In exit polls, 85% to 90% of voters who disapprove of the president’s performance now routinely vote against his party’s candidates in House elections, with a comparable share of voters who approve backing his party.
Many strategists believe there’s little reason to expect that will change much in 2026, especially with Trump pursuing such a polarizing conservative agenda. “We are heading into a midterm where Republicans are very much the incumbent party, and if people aren’t happy with what they are doing, and how the country is doing, I think that will matter more than almost anything else,” said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, whose firm conducts the NBC poll with McInturff’s.
If anything, recent elections strongly suggest that the fastest way for Democrats to rebuild their image is to coalesce public concern about Trump. At other recent points when either party has faced broad public disapproval, it has tended to recover less because of any dramatic changes it made than because voters soured on the other side. In the normal hydraulics of a two-party system, when one party falls, the other tends to rise.
Republicans, for instance, enjoyed a significant advantage in Gallup over Democrats in party image immediately after President George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004. But amid discontent over the Iraq War and Bush’s attempt to restructure Social Security, Democrats moved to their substantial lead by the fall of 2006.
Democrats likewise held a big lead in favorability immediately after Obama’s victory in 2008. But amid frustration over the slow recovery from the financial crash of 2008, the bitter controversy over passage of the Affordable Care Act, and a steady decline in Obama’s approval numbers, the parties moved to parity in Gallup polling by fall 2010 (though also with more Americans negative than positive on each). Republicans likewise faced a big deficit after Trump left office in 2021, but moved slightly ahead in favorability by 2022 amid the discontent with Biden (albeit with substantially more voters again negative than positive about each side).
In each case, the primary means that the party out of power used to redefine itself was opposition to the president’s agenda. In 2010, Mitch McConnell, then the GOP Senate leader, famously said that the party’s highest goal was to make Obama a one-term president.
Ken Spain, who served as communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2010, said discontent with Obama opened the door for voters to reconsider Republicans. “Republican favorability had cratered in 2008” as Bush’s second term ended, Spain said. But “in the eyes of voters, Democrats took their eye off the ball — the economy. Within two years, Republican favorability had continued to inch upward, and by the time of the 2010 midterms, the party was once again viewed as a viable alternative.”
Dan Sena, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during 2018, described virtually the same dynamic during Trump’s first term. In the DCCC’s private polling, “Going into January of ’17, on every major issue you could think of we were losing to Trump,” Sena said. “Then by August, we had turned them all around.”
Democrats improved their standing, he argued, initially by pushing back against Trump initiatives that proved unpopular with voters, particularly the tax cuts tilted to the affluent, and the GOP’s unsuccessful attempt to repeal the ACA. “It is important to remember there’s an arc to this, and it takes about six months historically for the resistance to take hold,” Sena said.
A weak public image is hardly without cost for Democrats. Party strategists worry that the low numbers among their own partisans could affect fundraising and the availability of volunteers. Discontent with Democrats likely would not prevent the party from gaining House seats in 2026 if most voters are negative on Trump, but it might reduce those gains, as the GOP’s negative image did in 2022. And if these dismal assessments of the Democrats persist, they would likely represent a greater threat in the 2028 presidential race: The party viewed more favorably in Gallup polling has won every presidential race since 1996, except in 2016.
But, as Abramowitz noted, the party images in 2028 likely will be shaped less by today’s sparring than by the public’s reaction to their eventual presidential nominees (which may be why party favorability appears to better predict presidential election than midterm results). In the meantime, he believes there’s little chance even Democratic voters frustrated with their leaders will sit out 2026 given their disgust at Trump’s presidency. “Democrats might not be happy with their party, but they still despise Trump,” Abramowitz said.
Fighting more forcefully against Trump won’t resolve all the Democrats’ problems with voters. But fanning more doubts about the president may be the party’s indispensable first step toward its own recovery.
