Trump's Approval Hits Record Lows in Two New Polls Weeks Before the Midterms

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026

Sixteen days before voters decide control of Congress, two major national polls released on Sunday, October 18 delivered the same blunt message: President Donald Trump's standing with the public has fallen to the lowest point of either of his terms, and the mood of the country has darkened with it. This is not one outlier survey having a bad weekend for the White House. It is two different pollsters, using different methods, landing in almost exactly the same place — and a third, from Fox News earlier in the week, pointing the same way.

Two polls, one floor

The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released October 18 found that 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump's job performance, while 66% disapprove. That is his lowest approval in that polling series, down from 37% in both April and July. The intensity matters as much as the headline number: 52% of adults say they strongly disapprove of the job he is doing, a share that leaves very little soft, persuadable middle for the White House to work with in the closing weeks of a campaign.

The NBC News Decision Desk poll, conducted with SurveyMonkey and also released October 18, found approval at 34% among all adults, with 66% disapproving and 51% strongly disapproving — that last figure a high for Trump's second term. Among registered voters, who are the people most likely to actually cast a ballot on November 3, approval stood at 39%, with 61% disapproving. The NBC survey was large: it interviewed 19,135 adults between September 28 and October 12, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 points, which makes the broad shape of the result hard to wave away as sampling noise.

Fox News added to the picture earlier in the week. Its poll released October 14 also marked Trump's lowest approval in that network's polling across either of his terms. When three separate polling operations — including one whose audience leans toward the president's own coalition — all record personal lows within days of each other, campaigns tend to stop arguing about methodology and start arguing about what to do next.

The wrong-track number that should worry Republicans most

If one figure in Sunday's releases deserves to be circled in red at Republican headquarters, it is probably not the approval rating itself. It is the direction-of-the-country question. In the NBC poll, 71% of adults say the United States is on the wrong track — the highest share recorded during Trump's second term. Wrong-track numbers have a long history in American politics as a kind of background radiation for midterm elections: when voters think the country is headed the wrong way, they tend to take it out on the party holding power, whether or not they blame that party for every specific problem.

That dynamic is visible in the congressional numbers. In the NBC poll, 55% of registered voters said they would choose Democrats to control Congress. In the Post-ABC poll, Democrats lead the House generic ballot — the standard 'which party would you vote for in your district' question — by 8 points among registered voters, up from a 3-point lead in July. A generic-ballot lead that widens as Election Day approaches is the opposite of the late tightening the White House was hoping to see.

Voters in the Post-ABC survey also said, by 58% to 39%, that they would prefer Democrats over Republicans as a check on the White House. That is roughly double the margin on the same question a year ago. In plain English: a clear majority of the electorate is not just unhappy with the president's performance — it is actively shopping for a counterweight to him, and it sees a Democratic Congress as that counterweight.

The economy, usually Trump's card, is now Democrats' card

For most of Trump's political career, the economy was the issue his team wanted every conversation to be about. Sunday's Post-ABC poll suggests that ground has shifted underneath him. About three in four respondents disapprove of Trump's handling of the cost of living and inflation — the kitchen-table issue that voters feel every week at the grocery store and the gas pump, not once a quarter in a government report.

More striking still, Democrats lead Republicans 40% to 33% on which party voters trust more on the economy. According to the poll's own historical comparison, this is the first time in more than a decade that Democrats have led on that question. Parties do not lose their signature issue advantage in a single cycle by accident. It reflects months of voters connecting high prices to the administration in charge — fairly or not, that is how midterm accountability usually works.

Neither party, it should be said, is popular. The NBC poll found both viewed unfavorably overall: Democrats at 43% favorable and 57% unfavorable, Republicans at 37% favorable and 63% unfavorable. This is an election in which voters are choosing between two parties they mostly dislike, which usually means the side that is not holding the presidency gets the benefit of the doubt — and the side holding it gets the bill.

What is actually at stake on November 3

The midterms are on Tuesday, November 3. Republicans are defending competitive Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas, according to the Cook Political Report, the nonpartisan election analyst. That map is the practical translation of Sunday's numbers: Senate races in states that are normally safe or lean Republican are competitive at all because the national environment has turned hostile, and a president at 33% to 34% approval cannot easily rescue a struggling nominee with a late rally or a television advertisement bearing his endorsement.

History offers a sobering precedent for the White House. In the 2018 midterms during Trump's first term, Democrats netted 41 House seats and picked up Senate seats in Arizona and Nevada. That was a cycle in which Trump's approval, while underwater, was not as low as the figures published this weekend. Nobody serious is predicting a specific seat count from two October polls — turnout, candidate quality and district lines all matter — but the direction and the consistency of the data are what strategists in both parties will take from this Sunday.

There is, of course, time for events to move the numbers. Sixteen days is a long time in a campaign that has already produced a government funding fight, a sanctions reversal and a string of economic headlines in a single week. But movement requires a reason, and right now the reasons voters are giving pollsters — prices, direction of the country, a desire for a check on the president — are structural, not the product of one bad news cycle. Republicans will spend the next two weeks trying to make the election a choice between two parties voters dislike. Democrats need only make it a referendum on the president whose approval has just hit its floor. Sunday's polls suggest the referendum version is the one voters are currently voting in. See our continuing coverage in Previously News as the final stretch begins.