The 2026 midterm elections should, by all rights, be good for Democrats.
That’s because midterms are almost always good for the party that doesn’t hold the presidency; that party has gained House seats in all but four midterms since the Civil War.
It’s also because President Donald Trump has been a remarkably unpopular president; Gallup last week found he now owns both the lowest early-first-term and early-second-term approval ratings since at least John F. Kennedy. (Independents, in particular, have turned sharply against Trump.)
However, there is a sizeable “but” that comes along with that right now.
It’s looking like Democrats could squander at least some of that opportunity, if they don’t do something about their brand, which is historically awful right now.
That doesn’t mean they’ll lose the midterms. But it could mean they won’t take full advantage and grow their numbers as much as they could.
A Wall Street Journal poll this week was merely the latest to show Democrats’ brand hitting a historic low. It showed 63% of registered voters had an unfavorable view of the party, while just 33% had a favorable one. Those are Democrats’ worst numbers in more than three decades. And the poll came just a couple weeks after Quinnipiac University showed something similar. A CNN poll around the same time also found Americans giving Democrats their lowest mark in CNN’s polling since 1992.
Plenty of Democrats will look at those numbers and convince themselves that they don’t matter all that much. Midterms are referendums on the president, after all. Americans might really not like Democrats that much, but a lot of that is Democrats themselves souring on their own party. Are those people really going to stay home or vote Republican, even with a chance to vote against Trumpism?
Those factors likely do mitigate the electoral impact of Democrats’ brand problem. And indeed, even the Wall Street Journal poll shows Democrats narrowly ahead of Republicans by 3 points on the generic ballot — a test of which party voters prefer in next year’s election.
But there is still a problem for Democrats here — and the fuller details of the Journal’s poll speak to it better than just about anything to date.
The poll asked voters not just how they felt about each party as a whole, but to choose which party in Congress is better at handling key issues. For example: Are Democrats or Republicans best able to handle the economy?
And that’s where things look pretty dire for Democrats.
Across 10 issues, Democrats led on just two of them – both of them having to do with health (health care and vaccine policy). Republicans led by double-digits on the economy (39-27%), inflation (38-28%) and immigration (45-28%), and they also led on foreign policy (39-31%) and even tariffs (37-30%).
Just to underscore: The tariffs and inflation are probably the biggest political problems for Trump early in his second term. But voters still prefer congressional Republicans on those issues, and by significant margins.
The Journal poll, in fact, shows Republicans with much better splits on these issues than Trump has.
While voters disapproved of Trump by a 9-point margin on the economy, they preferred congressional Republicans to congressional Democrats on that issue by 12 points. While Trump was 3 points underwater on immigration, Republicans led by 17. While voters disapproved of Trump on tariffs by 17 points, they favored Republicans by 7 points on that same issue.
Indeed, on half the issues – 5 of the 10 – Republicans’ margins versus Democrats were at least 20 points better than Trump’s net approval rating.
This isn’t completely apples-to-apples. The party question asks people to compare two options, while Trump’s approval ratings are just an up-or-down vote.
But if anything speaks to how Democrats are failing to take advantage of Trump’s problems, that would seem to be it. Americans don’t like what Trump is doing; they also clearly don’t see Democrats as a better alternative to Trump’s party.
And to be clear, this isn’t just an outlier poll with some funky findings.
Reuters-Ipsos polling back in April asked people to choose between the two parties on a range of issues (this time, the questions referred to the party more broadly, rather than its members of Congress). And despite Trump’s early problems coming into focus even then, Americans again mostly preferred Republicans, including on the biggest issues.
On 6 of 11 issues, Republicans led. The GOP led by 17 points on immigration, 7 on the economy and 11 on wars and foreign policy.
The only issues on which Democrats led were women’s rights, health care, education, the environment and “respect for democracy.”
And CNN polling a couple months back offered similar indicators. It showed Americans perceived the GOP as the party with “strong leaders” by a 40-16% margin. They also saw Republicans as the “party of change” by a 32-25% margin – despite the party out of power usually being viewed as the party of change.
None of these numbers mean Democrats are going to lose the election. Trump’s standing will probably be the biggest factor of all.
But it could certainly matter on the margins that Americans don’t see the opposition party as offering a better path forward than Trump’s party, even on a significant number of issues on which they clearly dislike Trump. As G. Elliott Morris and Mary Radcliffe noted last week, relative party images are often a pretty good indicator of election results, with notable exceptions.
Democrats should probably be asking themselves why their party isn’t leading by more than 3 points on the generic ballot right now, given Trump’s problems. And this might be a big reason why.
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