The Democrats are unpopular, rudderless — and on track for a comeback

The Democrats are historically unpopular, receiving exceptionally low marks from both the general public and their own voters. Yet the party is on track to retake the House come 2026. In Gallup’s most recent poll, only 38 percent of Americans voiced a favorable view of the Democrats, the party’s worst showing in at least three decades. Quinnipiac University, meanwhile, pegs approval of congressional Democrats at just 21 percent, an all-time low. And some of this disdain is coming from inside blue America: Only 40 percent of Democratic voters are “satisfied” with their party’s approach to fighting Donald Trump, according to Quinnipiac; in CNN’s polling, that figure is 22 percent. Nevertheless, by some metrics, the Democrats’ approach to combating Trump (bringing lawsuits and holding an occasional, little-watched news conference) appears to be working. When Trump took office, Americans approved of him by an 8.2-point margin, according to 538’s polling average. As of this writing, that figure is down to a mere 0.8 points. For context, at this point in Joe Biden’s presidency, Americans still approved of his job performance by more than 15 points. It is unusual for a president to see their approval fall this low this quickly. Meanwhile, Elon Musk — the face of the GOP’s push to cull the federal bureaucracy — is even more disliked than Trump. At least in some surveys, the public’s anxieties about Trump and Musk overwhelm their antipathy for the Democrats: In a Washington Post/Ipsos poll, voters said they preferred Democrats to control the next Congress by a 54 to 41 percent margin. And the betting market Kalshi currently gives the party a roughly 75 percent chance of retaking the House of Representatives in 2026. The dissonance between the Democrats’ exceptionally bad approval ratings — and the party’s seemingly rosy (albeit, very early) outlook in the upcoming midterms — is not hard to explain. Through Trump’s crusade to increase Americans’ cost-of-living through tariffs, Musk’s haphazard vandalism of the federal government, and congressional Republicans’ pursuit of unpopular Medicaid cuts, the GOP is doing the opposition’s work for it. If the Republican leadership continues heedlessly stoking a political backlash, then Democrats could mount an electoral comeback next year even if they change virtually nothing about their party’s messaging or substantive agenda (assuming, of course, that free and fair elections remain a part of America’s political system). In our political system, being the slightly less despised party is sometimes good enough. But if Democrats wish to build a large and durable majority — one capable of fully controlling the federal government and returning right-wing extremism to the political fringe — they will need to do more than serve as a widely disliked vessel for registering displeasure with Republican misrule. Trump won on a promise to lower prices — and is now deliberately raising them The primary basis for optimism about the Democrats’ midterm prospects isn’t poll numbers. Some surveys show the 2026 race for congressional control as a dead heat. And in any case, it’s too early to put a ton of stock into such data. The true fount of hope for a “blue wave” midterm is the Republican leadership’s political recklessness: Trump, Musk, and the congressional GOP are all pursuing their idiosyncratic ideological projects with gross disregard for public opinion. Americans’ top concern in last year’s election was their nation’s high and rising cost of living. Trump won the White House on the strength of his promises to curb inflation. Yet since taking office, he has shown virtually no interest in lowering consumer prices. To the contrary, Trump has ordered an array of tariffs that will directly increase the cost of imported goods for America’s households, and foreign-made parts for its manufacturers (which will in turn raise the prices of American-made goods). This has not been lost on the electorate. In February, consumer confidence fell at its fastest rate in three and a half years. This drop was driven by respondents’ anxieties over the administration’s policies on tariffs and trade, which have led consumers to expect higher inflation. Meanwhile, in recent polls, a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s economic management. Throughout Trump’s first term, voters consistently gave his handling of the economy higher marks than his overall job performance. Now, the opposite is true. Trump has plenty of time to persuade the public that he takes its concerns about inflation seriously. But he evinces no desire to do so. Despite a faltering stock market and resiliently elevated prices, Trump said this week that he intended to move forward with 25 percent tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican goods. Trump’s indifference to voters’ concerns could prove resilient. After all, he cannot run for another term, and has never demonstrated much concern for the Republican Party as an institution. Imposing steep tariffs — and then handing out exemptions to whichever business interests or nations genuflect before you — is not a great way to win the American people’s esteem. But it’s a fine way to make yourself feel powerful (if not, to induce purchases of your memecoin). Elon Musk’s purge of the federal workforce will (almost certainly) cost the GOP votes Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has also shown a remarkable indifference to the GOP’s best interests. In the abstract, downsizing the federal government and increasing its efficiency is a popular proposition. Some vulnerable GOP lawmakers, who have criticized their party on other issues, believe that the administration’s war on the federal bureaucracy is politically palatable. But this is almost certainly wrong. Many Americans may support a smaller federal workforce in the abstract. But few outside the conservative base hold this preference strongly. The typical swing voter likely could not tell you how many people work for the federal government, nor how many Musk has fired. When Gallup asked voters in January to name America’s most important problem, 0 percent cited the excessive size of the federal workforce. By contrast, for the thousands of workers whom Musk has fired — and the millions whom he has demeaned — DOGE is an extremely salient issue. And each of these workers has family and friends. For those most directly affected by Musk’s haphazard assault on the administrative state, it constitutes a strong argument against supporting the Republican Party. And although federal workers and their kin lean Democratic, there are still plenty of independent or Republican-leaning voters employed by the federal government (which preferentially hires military veterans, a strongly Republican constituency). What’s more, Musk’s heedless and incompetent approach to culling the civil service threatens to render DOGE politically toxic to an even wider constituency. The billionaire has not actually been firing federal workers on the basis of poor performance. Rather, he has been summarily laying off those listed as “probationary” in federal computer systems, a term that refers to workers who are either early in their government career or who have been recently promoted. In other words, Musk is specifically targeting high performers and young people — who are more likely to have up-to-date technical skills — for termination. Firing federal workers in large numbers — on a non-meritocratic basis — comes at an inevitable cost to the quality of public services. Musk accidentally laid off nuclear safety workers at the Department of Energy, and had to scramble to rehire them. Chaos and dysfunction have reigned at America’s national parks. More broadly, by controversially reordering nearly every federal agency, the GOP has taken political ownership of any (real or imagined) governance failure that arises between now and the next election. Meanwhile, Musk’s recent demand that each of the federal government’s roughly 3 million workers send him an email detailing five things they accomplished last week — or else, face termination — has burnished the Trump administration’s reputation for incompetence. Fearing that compliance with Musk’s requests would jeopardize government secrets, many of Trump’s own political appointees ordered their departments to ignore Musk’s email. Musk then lambasted the civil service and its “managers” for their insubordination, and reiterated his threat to fire any worker who failed to send him their accomplishments. Some voters may wish to see the government “run like a business.” But I doubt very many wish for it to be run like a business with a unhinged CEO who issues orders that middle management is forced to contradict, leaving workers afraid and uncertain how to proceed. Congressional Republicans are coming for Medicaid (again) The most politically toxic item on the Republican agenda, however, may be its plans for cutting Medicaid. This week, a Hart Research poll found that 82 percent of voters — including 71 percent of Trump supporters — consider Medicaid cuts unacceptable. That’s consistent with a 2024 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which showed 66 percent of voters saying Medicaid should be expanded to cover more low-income people. In conservative circles, there is widespread recognition that cutting Medicare and Social Security is politically untenable. But Republicans tend to see Medicaid as a softer target, since it primarily serves a low-income constituency and can therefore be derided as welfare. Unfortunately for the GOP, this is becoming less and less true. Thanks to Barack Obama’s Medicaid expansion — which raised the income ceiling on eligibility for the program — the number of Americans on Medicaid now outnumber those on Medicare. And as more baby boomers have aged into nursing homes, the ranks of middle-class Medicaid recipients have swelled. At the same time, the GOP has grown increasingly dependent on the votes of less affluent Americans. As a result, 11 House Republicans in competitive districts represent areas with larger-than-average Medicaid populations. This doesn’t just mean that many low-income Republicans rely on a well-funded Medicaid program; in many cases, it means that hospitals in heavily GOP districts rely on Medicaid reimbursement for their solvency. All this makes cutting Medicaid perilous for the GOP. Yet House Republicans are dead set on passing a $4.5 trillion tax cut. And there’s no way for them to square the budget math without draining Medicaid funding: On Tuesday, the House GOP passed a budget resolution that implies Medicaid cuts of as much as $880 billion. Health care is already a weakness for Republicans: According to a poll aggregation from FiveThirtyEight, voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of health care by a 27-point margin, making it his worst issue. The congressional GOP is poised to dramatically increase the salience of that subject, while further souring the public on their party’s approach to it. Democrats still need to improve their party’s image Republicans’ brazen indifference to public opinion gives the opposition party an excellent shot of winning the 2026 midterms by default. Still, Democrats must not bank on Trump doing their job for them. For one thing, a lot can change between now and November 2026. A favorable turn in economic conditions could mitigate the GOP’s vulnerabilities, and thus, exacerbate the Democrats’ own political liabilities. Regardless, riding an anti-Trump backlash to a strong midterm showing won’t solve all the Democrats’ problems. Even as betting markets anticipate a Democratic House takeover next year, they give Republicans a more than 80 percent chance of keeping the Senate. This is because the existing Democratic coalition is heavily concentrated in coastal states, giving the party a structural disadvantage in the fight for Congress’s upper chamber. For this reason, to build robust congressional majorities, Democrats will need to dramatically broaden their coalition. And it is unlikely that the party can do this merely by being Trump’s default opposition. Furthermore, while midterm elections tend to be referenda on the incumbent party, presidential contests pit divergent political visions against each other. Assuming Trump does not unconstitutionally run in 2028, Republicans will have the opportunity to select a new standard-bearer. To minimize the odds of the GOP executing a political makeover in four years, Democrats must pull off one of their own. In short, the party should view the GOP’s reckless disregard for public opinion as an opportunity to forge a new coalition, not an excuse for forgoing that task.

Clarity in this chaotic news cycle

The Democrats are unpopular, rudderless — and on track for a comeback