It’s hard to overstate what the latest polling means for the Republican Party as the midterm elections draw near. With just 13 days until voters head to the polls, a new New York Times/Siena University survey paints a picture of a deeply frustrated electorate, and the man at the center of it all, President Donald Trump, is facing the bleakest numbers of his second term. The most striking finding? Nearly three-quarters of likely voters, 73 percent, disapprove of how Trump has handled gas prices, while only 24 percent approve. That issue alone has become a lightning rod for broader economic pain, and it cuts across every demographic group. It’s not just Democrats who are angry. Among independents, 77 percent disapprove. Even 42 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of people who voted for him in 2024 say they’re unhappy with his handling of the cost of filling up their tanks. For voters under 30, disapproval spikes to an overwhelming 91 percent, and Hispanic voters, a group that shifted toward Trump in the last election, disapprove 79 percent to 17 percent. There’s a human story buried in those numbers: people are looking at their monthly budgets, watching the numbers on the gas station sign climb, and feeling a sense of betrayal. They expected relief, and instead they feel squeezed. That frustration has dragged Trump’s overall approval rating down to 36 percent among likely voters, with 59 percent disapproving. Among registered voters, his approval sits at 34 percent, three points lower than the previous month and the lowest of his entire second term. Political analysts are already drawing dreaded historical comparisons: no president has gone into a midterm with ratings this low since Harry Truman in 1946, when his approval stood at 33 percent and his party lost both chambers of Congress. The message from voters seems to be less about ideology and more about consequence: they feel the cost of everything, and they want someone to answer for it.
The economic anxiety driving this wave of disapproval goes far beyond gas prices. In the same poll, 64 percent of likely voters said they disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, a significant jump from the 53 percent who disapproved in September. When asked to describe national economic conditions, 75 percent called them fair or poor, and more than half said they were outright poor. The cost of living is another major sore spot, with 69 percent disapproving of Trump’s approach, and 61 percent disapprove of his tariff policies, which many economists say have contributed to higher prices rather than fixed them. There is also the shadow of war: 65 percent disapproved of how Trump has handled the conflict in Iran, and that issue is weighing heavily on Republican candidates across the country. Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser put it plainly, saying the cost of living, gas and diesel prices, housing, and healthcare are all piling up on his party. That’s all weighing on Republicans. Jim Kessler, a centrist policy expert, was even more direct, arguing that no one thinks the economy is good today, and they rightfully blame the president because the tariffs and Iran War were his ideas alone. This has created a political environment that feels eerily similar to 2006, when President George W. Bush’s approval ratings sank under the weight of a Middle East war, rising gas prices, and corruption allegations, leading to a Democratic wave that swept both chambers of Congress. For everyday Americans, this isn’t about abstract policy debates. It’s about the hard math of putting food on the table, keeping the car running, and trying to find a little breathing room at the end of the month. And in that deeply personal calculation, the president is getting the blame. Pollster Nate Cohn noted that the new survey offers no reason to think Republicans have stopped the bleeding, let alone made progress toward winning back their usual supporters. Across every single issue tested, voters now say they trust Democrats more than Republicans, with the widest gaps on healthcare, cost of living, gas prices, corruption, and even foreign wars.
Perhaps the most dramatic reversal in the poll is on immigration, the issue that helped carry Trump back to the White House. It was supposed to be his strongest ground, the topic where his message resonated most deeply with the voters who swept him into office. But the new Times/Siena poll shows that immigration has become a liability. Among likely voters, 57 percent disapprove of Trump’s handling of the issue, while 42 percent approve. The intensity of that disapproval is striking: 49 percent strongly disapprove, compared to 34 percent who strongly approve. That’s a shift from September, when registered voters were almost evenly divided, with 46 percent approving and 52 percent disapproving. The share of voters who strongly disapprove has climbed six points since then. But immigration remains Trump’s best-rated issue in the poll, which says more about the depth of public frustration with everything else than it does about enthusiasm for his immigration record. He is still fifteen points underwater on the issue, and independents disapprove 61 percent to 37 percent. Hispanic voters are even more critical, with 67 percent disapproving, and they now trust Democrats over Republicans on immigration by a 27-point margin. Younger voters have also turned sharply against him, with disapproval among those under 30 climbing from 68 percent in September to 79 percent now. Republicans still hold a strong edge with white voters who do not have a college degree, who trust the GOP on immigration 61 percent to 36 percent, but that advantage is no longer enough to offset the broader erosion. In November 2024, a Pew Research Center survey found that 53 percent of Americans trusted Trump on immigration. Now, that trust appears to have fractured, and Democrats have pulled ahead on the issue, 50 percent to 46 percent. For voters, the human reality of immigration policy might feel more complicated than any political slogan. They want secure borders, but they are also seeing images of families in crisis, and they are deeply uncomfortable with the way the administration has handled the human cost. The intensity of their disapproval suggests that immigration, once a rallying cry for the president, has become another reason to vote for change.
Democrats, meanwhile, find themselves in an unexpectedly strong position, though not necessarily because voters have fallen in love with the party. On the generic congressional ballot, Democrats lead by 52 percent to 41 percent, a margin that would be the largest national House vote for any party since 2008. They also hold a five-point lead in combined Senate races and an eleven-point lead in gubernatorial contests. This has fueled expectations that Democrats will retake the House, and possibly the Senate, where Republicans currently hold 53 seats and Democrats need a net gain of four to take control. But Democratic strategists are warning against overconfidence. Former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp put it simply: I think the Democrats shouldn’t get too cozy about saying that people are selecting the Democratic Party. I think they’re rejecting the party of Donald Trump. That distinction matters. The same poll shows that 70 percent of voters are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party, and half of likely voters say Democrats are too far to the left. The party’s advantage in the polls is more about the opposition to Trump than it is about a sudden surge of enthusiasm for Democratic policies. Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist, urged his party to stay humble, saying every Democrat should be running like they are 10 points behind. Pollsters also caution that surveys have historically overestimated Democratic support, as happened in 2016 and 2020. There are other warning signs buried in the data: Democrats lead by only nine points among registered voters with a record of voting in a past midterm or primary, and by fourteen points among those who say they are very likely to vote. That suggests the electorate remains unpredictable, and the margin of error in these races is real. But the overall picture is still one of a party that has been handed an enormous opportunity, not because it has won the hearts of the nation, but because the incumbent president has lost them.
The Times/Siena poll is not alone in showing Trump at record lows. A Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed this week put Trump’s approval at just 31 percent, the lowest of either of his terms, with 66 percent disapproving. In that survey, registered voters favored Democrats for Congress by a twelve-point margin. CNN’s poll had Trump at 32 percent approval, while a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll landed at 33 percent, a record low in that series, though likely voters were slightly warmer at 38 percent. Fox News found 36 percent approval among registered voters, and Pew Research Center came in even lower at 30 percent, the most unflattering number of any major survey this month. The one outlier was CBS News and YouGov, which put Trump at 39 percent, but that is still underwater and hardly a cause for celebration in the White House. When you average all of these polls together, Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin calculates Trump’s net approval at -24.3, a new low and two points worse than just a week earlier. At the same point in his first term, Gallup had Trump at 43 percent approval, meaning his standing has collapsed by roughly ten points compared to where he was four years ago. These numbers are not just abstract statistics; they represent the mood of a nation that feels exhausted, anxious, and unimpressed. Across every age group, every income bracket, and every region, the dominant emotion is disappointment. Voters are not necessarily asking for dramatic transformation. They are asking for competence, for relief, for something that makes them feel like their lives are moving in the right direction. Instead, they see instability abroad, rising prices at home, and a president whose approval rating is now historically comparable to the worst eras of modern American politics. The consistency of these polls across different organizations and methodologies makes it impossible to dismiss as partisan noise. This is a broad, cross-cutting wave of discontent, and it is coming directly at the White House.
For all the numbers, the human story is the most important part. The poll asked voters whether they would prefer a candidate who provides a check on Trump or one who supports him, and nearly half, 47 percent, said they want the check. Only 22 percent want a candidate who supports him, while 27 percent say it doesn’t matter. That is the clearest signal of all: this election is not a referendum on Democratic ideas. It is a plea for balance, for someone to stop the bleeding, for a government that sees ordinary people struggling and responds with something more than rhetoric. The voters who disapprove of Trump on gas prices are not all progressives. Many of them are people who voted for him, who believed he would fix the economy, who wanted him to succeed. They are grandparents watching their fixed incomes stretch thinner every month, parents driving their kids to school and wondering why gasoline costs seem so much higher than they did two years ago, small-business owners calculating shipping costs and supply chain expenses. They are not asking for a revolution. They are asking for relief. And because they don’t feel that relief, they are turning away. The Democratic Party has an opportunity, but it is a fragile one. Voters are skeptical of both parties, and their dissatisfaction with the alternatives is almost as high as their disapproval of the president. The only lasting conclusion from this moment is that trust is in short supply, and the politicians who understand that, who speak to the ordinary struggles of everyday life, are the ones who will define the future. But for now, with the midterms just days away, the burden of proof is on the Republican Party. The president’s approval rating has sunk to historic lows, the issues that carried him into power have turned against him, and the voters are telling pollsters, one after another, that they have had enough. This is not just a political story. It is a story about how a nation’s confidence can be shaken by the price of a gallon of gas, the cost of a carton of eggs, and the feeling that no one in Washington is truly listening. On November 3, those feelings will meet the ballot box, and every candidate in America will have to answer for them.
