First, from G. Elliott Morris, more poor approval numbers:
In our new poll, 33% of Americans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president and 63% disapprove, a net rating of −30 (using unrounded approval figures) and the worst reading in the 16 waves of this poll since May 2025. The previous floor was −26 in April.
One suspects that Natalie is not printing this one out for the boss:
A chart about approval that I think is worth highlighting is the following. It actually gives me some level of solace about the broader electorate, insofar as it lends evidence to the notion that the true MAGA core of the party is far smaller than all Republican voters. Some level of softer approval for Trump is because of the R by his name (the support that gets him to 71% of all Republicans), and is therefore difficult to dislodge in a polarized, binary party system. It does not excuse, in a moral sense, that support (in my view), but it does fit expected patterns of mass behavior. Indeed, there can be no Blue wave if some number of Republican-leaning voters don’t do some combination of switching their vote or staying home out of lack of support for the party.
It is further evidence to me that we desperately need reforms that would incentivize the two parties to split into purer parties that would allow the isolation of more extreme elements of our politics so that they could not take over one party, and by extension the whole of the federal government. If more normie conservatives had somewhere to go these days (instead of to the “enemy, ” i.e., the Dems), they would take their voters elsewhere.
In terms of voter intent, registered voters give Democrats a 9-point edge, and likely voters 10 points:
The newest YouGov poll shows even worse generic numbers for the GOP:
If this trend holds (or gets worse for Republicans, which is possible), then there will be a serious pro-D wave in November, despite the notoriously poor competitiveness in our system. This kind of environment is what makes things like a Talarico win in Texas more than a pipe dream and why even places like Iowa and Kansas are possible flips (the own-goal on diesel prices by the Trump administration is just beyond amazing).
It is also the case that it is increasingly likely that a lot of GOP mid-term gerrymanders may turn to dummymanders (in TX and FL especially) since the map-drawers based their strategies on Trump margins in 2024, which was a substantially more favorable environment for them than is currently true. Watch Hispanic voters in particular in those places.
