Trump Approval Underwater in 39 States as Midterms Loom, State Tracker Finds

WASHINGTON — Thirty-nine out of fifty. Sit with that number for a second. With less than a month to go before the midterm elections, a new state-by-state tracker from Civiqs shows President Donald Trump’s net approval rating underwater in 39 states — including all six New England states — with positive net approval in just 11. It is the kind of polling map that, in any normal election cycle, would have a White House rewriting its entire closing argument on a napkin in a conference room right about now.

And the national numbers don’t offer a softer landing. An average of recent polls from the New York Times puts Trump’s approval at just 37% as of October 7, with 60% disapproving. That’s not a dip. That’s the floor falling out — and the president’s own campaign schedule shows he knows it. He’s spent the last month crisscrossing red states trying to prop up Senate and House candidates in places that were supposed to be safe.

The state tracker11 states holding the line

The Civiqs findings are remarkable for their breadth. Every one of the 11 states where Trump still holds positive net approval backed him in the last three presidential elections — the hardest of hard-core territory. Everywhere else, from New England to the industrial Midwest to the Sun Belt, he’s underwater. When a president is net-negative in states he won, the map isn’t a warning light anymore; it’s a fire.

That state-level erosion is what should keep GOP strategists up at night. National approval numbers are abstract. State numbers are seats. And Senate races in particular live or die on whether a president’s coattails are something candidates want to be seen in — right now, in states like Texas, even the president’s chosen candidates are having an awkward time of it. Trump is rallying in San Antonio today for a Senate candidate who has reportedly told donors the Trump-centered convention in Dallas actually dropped everybody’s numbers.

The national pollsRecord-low territory

Here’s what the most recent national polls show about Trump’s job approval as of October 7, per reporting by the Providence Journal:

Reuters/Ipsos has him at 32% approve, 65% disapprove — a net of minus-33 — from a poll of 4,506 adults conducted September 30 through October 5. That’s an enormous sample, and the result is the lowest of his presidency. AP-NORC is even bleaker: 31% approve, 69% disapprove (September 24–28, 2,140 adults). Quinnipiac finds 33% approve, 60% disapprove (September 24–27, 1,032 registered voters). Emerson College offers the relative outlier — if you can call minus-19 an outlier: 39% approve, 58% disapprove (September 21–22, 1,100 likely voters).

Five pollsters, four different methodologies, one story. When the good news is "the best poll has you at 39," you’re not shopping for spin; you’re shopping for a time machine.

Why voters are unhappyPrices, the economy, the Iran war

The polls agree on the why, too. Voters keep naming the same three grievances: high prices, the economy, and the war with Iran. Trump’s inflation approval has hit record lows for any president, and his instinct has been to blame the GOP’s midterm messaging rather than the economic reality voters are living. That’s a tell. Presidents who think they’re winning on the economy don’t fire their communications team; they run victory laps.

The Iran war has become the other anchor. It’s the kind of foreign entanglement that scrambles the political math: it doesn’t break cleanly along partisan lines, it costs money voters don’t have, and it undercuts the strongest argument any incumbent party has — that things are getting better. A president at 31% approval with a war on and grocery prices up is not a messaging problem. It’s a math problem.

The stakesNovember 3 is four weeks out

All of this lands less than a month before the November 3 midterm elections, when voters decide which party controls Congress. A president this unpopular is the entire midterm argument in one chart — every House and Senate challenger in the country just got their mailer copy handed to them. Democrats don’t need to make the case that the president is struggling; they can point to the polls and get out of the way.

Trump, for his part, isn’t hiding. His 32-day campaign blitz has taken him through Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Ohio and Nebraska — red states where Republicans are defending territory they expected to win comfortably. "My rallies are saving the Republican Party, again," he posted on Truth Social this week. The polling suggests it’s a heavier lift than that sentence implies.

In Nebraska on Sunday, en route to Grand Island, Trump sounded unbothered. "When I go there, they pick up a lot of seats," he told reporters at the White House. "When I go there they win." It’s a striking claim from a president sitting at record-low approval — and it sets up the simplest test of this midterm: whether presidential star power can still outperform presidential approval when the two are pulling in opposite directions.

The honest read: 39 states underwater is not a number a party climbs out of in four weeks with rallies alone. The only question left is whether it’s a wave or a reckoning — and the answer, as always, depends on who shows up. Early voting is already underway in parts of the country, and the clock is not the president’s friend.