Polls Point to a Democratic 'Blue Wave' as US Midterms Become a Referendum on Trump

Next week's US midterm elections have effectively become a national referendum on Donald Trump's second term in the White House. It was five words he uttered at this summer's Republican convention in Dallas that may have sealed that: "Pretend I'm on the ticket." The plea was music to the ears of Democrats, and opinion polls suggest the voters' judgment will be damning — piercing his aura of invincibility, reshaping the final two years of his presidency and setting the stage for a fierce battle to succeed him.

Pain is the norm for White House incumbents when the midterms roll around. In 1994, Bill Clinton suffered a 54-seat setback in the House of Representatives; in 2010, Barack Obama lost 63; in 2018, Trump himself lost 40. He seems unlikely to defy history this time: Trump goes into the elections with the lowest approval rating of any president before the midterms since Harry Truman's Democrats were crushed 80 years ago.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos survey gave Democrats an 11-point lead, 47% to 36%, on the generic congressional ballot, while Trump's approval rating stood at 32%.

Republicans are clinging to a paper-thin 218–214 margin in the House and a 53–47 lead in the Senate. Voters will also choose governors in 36 states and three US territories, and decide thousands of state legislative contests.

Tens of millions of early votes have already been cast, with habitual Republican turnout lagging behind Democratic participation in critical battlegrounds. So dire is the environment for Republicans that conservative Super Pacs backed by billionaire Elon Musk, who has poured $366m into saving Republican candidates, are being forced to dump emergency funds into strongholds like Kansas, Iowa and Texas.

Trump won the presidency in 2024 after promising to curb inflation and lower prices; instead, the opposite has happened. Across the country, voters are confronting an affordability crisis exacerbated by two defining choices of his second term: a sweeping regime of foreign tariffs and the decision to launch airstrikes on Iran in February. The war he promised would be over in weeks is now eight months old.

The economic fallout of the Iran war has reverberated across global energy markets. Diesel prices have soared, sending shock waves through agriculture and freight transport from the Central Valley of California to the grain belts of Iowa and Ohio.

The anger has been compounded by a whiff of corruption and the perception that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family. He accepted a plane from Qatar to use as Air Force One, decorated the Oval Office in gold, demolished the White House East Wing to make way for a $400m ballroom and is planning a triumphal arch in Washington. His personal fortune has meanwhile surged from $2.3bn in 2024 to $6.5bn, according to Forbes. His coalition has also been hit by his failure to fully release the Jeffrey Epstein files and by the growth of datacentres in rural communities.

Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said: "Donald Trump nationalised these races, and now they'll lose seats because of it. He made himself the referendum. Individual candidates wanted to run their individual races but he told them: 'Put me on the ballot.' He has political instincts for himself, but no political instincts for the party."

Political commentator Chris Matthews said Trump is losing on cost of living and affordability, with older people on limited incomes focusing on what it costs to live each month. Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, pointed out that voters can directly attribute their economic misery to the president: "It's going to be the tariffs and it's going to be the war: both self-inflicted wounds. He didn't have to raise tariffs. Bombing nuclear sites in Iran was one thing, but going to all-out war turned out to be a mistake."

This frustration is fuelling an energetic mobilisation among Democratic candidates, particularly women running in districts that once seemed out of reach. Jessica Mackler, president of Emily's List, which is backing 247 female candidates this cycle, said voters understand that the corruption coming out of Washington is directly linked to why they can't get ahead, and that cost of living is a huge driver.

Perhaps no development is more alarming to Republican strategists than the dramatic erosion of support among Latino voters. In 2024, Trump made historic inroads with Latino men. Yet no sooner had he taken office than he unleashed an aggressive deportation campaign featuring heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in cities and agricultural hubs, which has powerfully alienated the fastest-growing part of the electorate.

Larry Jacobs, founder and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said Republicans thought a new Hispanic coalition would guarantee five new seats in Texas alone, and they may lose all of them. Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said that whether the Latino shift is 15 points or 30 points, it is a big deal — voters are having serious buyers' remorse.

This dynamic is evident in Texas, where no Democrat has won statewide office since 1994. James Talarico, a 37-year-old state representative and former public school teacher, is taking on Republican state attorney general Ken Paxton in the most expensive Senate race in history. Paxton, a staunch Trump ally bogged down by years of corruption allegations, personal scandal and securities fraud charges, faces $300m in outside Republican spending led by Musk — yet Talarico holds a narrow lead in most polls.