Poll: Most voters say Trump has hurt the economy as competitive midterm election looms

President Donald Trump’s sinking ratings threaten to drag down Republicans in November’s midterm elections, as voters blame him for high prices and a shaky economy, according to a new NBC News poll.

The president’s approval rating stands at 41% among registered voters, a second-term low in the poll, with a majority (55%) of voters saying they believe Trump’s policies have hurt the economy. That’s up from 48% in March, before the Iran war pushed up prices on gas and other goods and cemented the rising cost of living as voters’ most pressing issue.

Democrats hold a 5-point edge in the battle for control of Congress, 50%-45% — not nearly as large a lead as the 12-point advantage the party enjoyed at this point before the 2018 election, when Democrats rode an anti-Trump wave to the House majority in his first midterm as president. Despite that lead, the Democratic Party is still viewed more negatively than Trump and the GOP.

That could help Republicans, along with the fact that the fight for control of the House and especially the Senate is playing out in traditionally Republican parts of the country. Democrats would have to flip multiple states Trump carried by double digits in 2024 to win the Senate.

“We have a classic battle between these numbers and the political geography in which this campaign will be decided,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, whose firm conducted the survey alongside Democratic firm Hart Research Associates. “And the Republicans are still standing because of the geography in which this election will be won or lost.”

Still, the poll suggests an increasingly gloomy political environment for the GOP. Longtime double-digit leads over the Democratic Party on who would better handle inflation and the economy have evaporated. More than 6 in 10 voters say the Iran war has not been worth it. Voters don’t appear to be motivated by Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation he championed last year.

Instead, Trump himself is a powerful motivating factor, but more for Democrats than for Republicans, as more voters — including nearly half of independents — say they consider their vote a signal of opposition to the president than at any other time in three decades of NBC News polling before midterm elections.