President Donald Trump’s approval rating reached a historic low in the lead-up to the midterm elections, according to a new poll conducted by The Wall Street Journal.
Trump’s approval dipped to 37%, which marked the lowest of any president prior to the midterms in Journal polls stretching back to 1990, the Journal reported.
The president’s flagging approval rating comes as independent election watchers swing expectations more in favor of Democrats and Republican lawmakers grow increasingly nervous about the political salience of Democrats’ affordability messaging.
The Cook Political Report, a prognosticator that analyzes the competitiveness of elections, moved 15 House races toward Democrats on Friday. Republicans are facing likelier odds of not maintaining their House majority after the midterms, it said. Republicans’ Senate majority also increasingly looks up for grabs, it said.
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In the last week, Republican lawmakers have increasingly fretted that the president’s low approval numbers are hurting them. Some Republican candidates in tight races have even moved to distance themselves from some of Trump’s most polarizing issues. That includes Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who released an ad criticizing the immigration enforcement crackdown, and Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers calling for the Iran war to end.
One major challenge for Republicans appears to be increasing costs of gasoline and diesel as a result of the war, according to a Reuters poll released Sept. 21, which also marked Trump’s approval rating as a record low. Americans have signaled in recent months that the economy is one of their main issues.
Senate Republicans have publicly expressed their frustrations with a lack of focus on the affordability crisis, as The Washington Sun reported. The Senate is gearing up to head home through the November elections next week.
“We seem to be focused on issues many of you don’t even care about,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) posted on X. “We’re just not doing what we should be doing to deal with issues you care about.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump defended his popularity earlier in September, telling reporters that his approval ratings are “great, the problem is only the legitimate pollsters show it.”
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