President Donald Trump enters the 2026 US midterm elections on November 3 (November 4 in Taiwan) carrying the weakest pre-election approval ratings of any American president since Harry Truman in 1946, a year in which Truman's Democrats lost 56 House seats and control of the chamber.
History offers Republicans little comfort. Since World War II, the president's party has lost House seats in 18 of the 20 midterm elections, and only two presidents, Bill Clinton in 1998 and George W. Bush in 2002, managed to gain ground. Polls suggest Trump is unlikely to become the third. The outcome will also be watched in Taipei, since Congress plays a central role in US arms sales and other support for Taiwan.
House Records Show 18 Losses In 20 Midterms
Party division tables kept by the Office of the Historian of the US House of Representatives read like a ledger of setbacks for whoever holds the White House. Across the 20 midterms from 1946 to 2022, the president's party lost an average of about 26 House seats per election.
Some of the defeats were severe. Barack Obama's Democrats gave up 64 seats in 2010, and Clinton's Democrats lost 54 in 1994. In Trump's first term, Republicans lost 42 House seats in 2018. The only exceptions came in 1998, when Clinton's party picked up four seats, and in 2002, when Bush's Republicans gained eight.
Scholars Trace The Pattern To Voter Frustration
Political scientists offer several explanations for the midterm penalty. Peter Enns, a professor of government at Cornell University, told TIME that a president is squeezed from two directions: supporters "may feel that there hasn't been enough progress," while those who voted against him "may be even more frustrated because they disagree with the Administration's actions."
Costas Panagopoulos of Northeastern University said voters may be seeking "partisan balance in Washington." When one party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, he told TIME, "There's simply nobody else to blame for government actions and current policies."
Georgetown University's Michele Swers described the midterm as "a referendum on how things are going with the presidency." Although the president is not on the ballot, she said, "in general, the President loses seats because people are angry with the President."
Trump Lacks The Popularity That Saved Bush In 2002
The two presidents who broke the pattern did so from a position of strength. Bush went into the 2002 midterms, the first after the September 11 attacks, with a 63% approval rating in Gallup polling, TIME reported, and his party gained seats in both the House and the Senate. "It bucked the historical trend," Panagopoulos said.
Trump's numbers point the other way. The Pew Research Center put his approval at 30% in early October. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released on October 21 found 32%, which is 7 percentage points below his standing just before the 2018 midterms. Even among Republicans, his approval has slipped to 74%, down from 88% in February 2025.
Rémy Numa, a political consultant and contributor to Fox News, tied the slide to the war with Iran. Trump's approval stood at 44% in the last survey before the war and sits at 36% now, Numa wrote. "In his 11-year political career, President Trump has triumphed over almost all the threats to his power," he added. "The exception was the coronavirus pandemic." Iran, in his view, has become a new foreign adversary of the same kind.
Pocketbook concerns are adding to the strain. An Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in late September found that only 17% of US adults approved of Trump's handling of the cost of living.
Republicans Bet On Trump As Their Closing Messenger
Trump's answer has been to put himself at the center of the campaign. In a final stretch of rallies, he has urged supporters to close their eyes and pretend he is on the ballot. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle called him the party's "unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator." Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters made the same case on Fox News in January: "Our secret weapon is President Trump."
The strategy has been tested before. In 2018, a similar wave of presidential rallies did not stop Democrats from retaking the House. Michigan pollster Richard Czuba has argued that the dividing line in this race is how voters feel about Trump, and that the focus on the president has kept Republicans from courting conservatives who are disappointed in him.
A Strong Economy Failed To Protect Republicans In 2018
Trump's first midterm showed that good economic news may not rescue an unpopular president. In Gallup's October 15 to 28, 2018 survey, his approval was 41%, "well below the 52% average in midterm elections since 1974." Yet 55% of Americans rated economic conditions as excellent or good, for a net score of +43, far above the +10 average since 1994. Gallup concluded at the time that "a good economy may not be enough to offset Trump's weaker approval ratings."
It was not. Republicans lost 42 House seats while Democrats gained 41. Republicans did add two Senate seats, growing their majority from 51 to 53, but they gave up six governorships.
This year, the economy is a liability rather than a cushion. A Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos poll conducted October 9 to 13 put Trump's overall approval at 33%, the lowest of either of his terms. Only 28% approved of his handling of the economy, compared with 49% at the same point in 2018. About three-quarters disapproved of how he is managing inflation and the cost of living, and 48% said they are worse off financially than when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, the highest share the poll has recorded since 1986.
Democrats Lead House Forecasts As Senate Stays Competitive
Democrats have been predicting a rout for months. Veteran strategist James Carville said on Fox News in January: "I'm looking at the 2026 elections, and, frankly, it's going to be a wipeout." He forecast Democratic gains of "at a minimum, 25 seats, maybe as high as 45" in the House and added, "In all likelihood, the Democrats will carry the Senate." On the right, Jeffrey Blehar of the conservative magazine National Review wrote that if the polls are to be believed, Republicans face a sweeping defeat in November.
Panagopoulos called presidential approval "among the best predictors of outcomes in midterm election cycles" and said he expects Republicans "to be facing an uphill battle at the polls." According to NPR, the president's party loses 26 House seats on average in midterms, and nine more than that when the president's approval rating is below 50%.
There are limits to the wave, however. NPR noted that the last three midterms produced smaller House losses despite unpopular presidents, largely because the number of competitive districts has shrunk. Numa sees "two electorates" this year: one "frustrated with President Donald Trump and ready to reject Republicans," enough to hand Democrats at least 223 House seats in his forecast, and a second that "is wavering on Republicans but won't necessarily hand Democrats the Senate." The road to a Senate majority, he wrote, "goes through several states that Trump won by 11 points or more."
