As President Donald Trump struggles to gain back support for his handling of the economy, he is facing significant frustration from within his own party: Republicans have dramatically soured on his economic policies, a new poll from the New York Times and Siena University found.
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In January, the poll found, 72 percent of Republican voters said the economy was better than it had been a year before. Now, nine months later, just 29 percent of Republicans say that’s the case.
The finding underscores Republican officials’ worry leading up to the November midterm election: that the party will not only fail to sway independent voters, but also struggle to turn out its own base.
While Trump’s approval rating remained steady at its low of 38 percent, for the first time this term, the poll found a majority of voters — 52 percent — disapprove “strongly” of Trump. Overall, 59 percent disapproved.
White voters without college degrees, the demographic most favorable to Trump, disapproved of his handling of the cost of living by 21 percentage points.
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And voters earning less than $50,000 — a bloc Trump narrowly won in the 2024 election — are now two times as likely to say they’ll vote for a Democrat for Congress this fall than a Republican, the survey found.
The GOP is also running somewhat behind Democrats in enthusiasm: Sixty-one percent of Democrats reported that they’re almost certain to vote, compared to 56 percent of Republicans.
That enthusiasm gap has led Trump to urge his supporters to show up to the polls as if it were 2024 again: “Pretend that I’m on the ballot,” Trump has said repeatedly in recent weeks, including during a speech at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas last week.
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