A new poll by the Wall Street Journal finds that fewer American voters view the Democratic Party favorably than at any point in the last 35 years. Democrats are viewed unfavorably by 63 percent of voters, “the highest share in Journal polls dating to 1990,” and are seen favorably by just 33 percent of voters.
The survey shows that Democrats’s net-favorability is far below water at -30 percent — the lowest ever recorded in polls going back to 1990 — after falling dramatically throughout Joe Biden’s presidency. Since the 2024 presidential election, Democrats’s approval numbers have deteriorated even further.
In comparison, Americans view the Republican Party and President Trump much less harshly than Democrats, according to the poll, though both are still viewed unfavorably on net. Eleven percent of voters view the Republican Party more unfavorably than favorably, while 7 percent of voters say the same of Trump.
Although the Democratic Party is hoping that backlash against unpopular Trump administration policies will propel it to victory in the 2026 midterms, this survey casts doubt on that strategy. While “voters disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs and foreign policy,” they nonetheless “say they trust Republicans rather than Democrats to handle those same issues in Congress.”
Indeed, voters say that they trust congressional Republicans over Democrats to handle nearly every major issue, save for healthcare and vaccines. On immigration, the poll finds that voters favor Republicans by 17 percentage points. To handle illegal immigration in particular, they trust Republicans over Democrats by 24 points. Illegal immigration is the only issue on which Trump has a positive approval rating.
Even on issues where President Trump has a negative approval rating — such as the economy, inflation, and foreign policy — voters trust Republicans to address the issues in Congress more than Democrats. “By 17 points, voters disapprove rather than approve of Trump’s handling of tariffs,” the Journal notes, “and yet Republicans are trusted more than Democrats on the issue by 7 points.”
With Republicans holding the House of Representatives by a narrow margin of 219-212, some Democrats think that recent displays of anger by voters at Republican town halls portend a repeat of the 2018 midterms, when Democrats took control of the chamber by flipping 41 seats. Yet the “political environment today looks different now” for Democrats than during Trump’s first term, according to the Journal.
“At about this point in 2017, more voters called themselves Democrats than Republicans by 6 percentage points in Journal polling.” Now, however, “more voters identify as Republicans than as Democrats, a significant change in the structure of the electorate—and a rarity in politics.” This month’s survey finds that “more voters identify as Republicans than as Democrats by 1 percentage point, and the GOP led by 4 points in the April poll.”
Asking voters how they would vote in the midterms if they were held today, the Journal found Democrats leading Republicans by 3 points — 46 to 43 percent. Although that is a “significant advantage for the Democrats at this early stage,” the party was leading Republicans by 8 points at the same point in 2017.
All of these poor numbers for Democrats come as President Trump’s approval rating remains negative. “Trump’s job approval rating, at 46 percent, is lower than the 52 percent who disapprove of his performance in office,” the Journal says. However, Trump’s approval rating today “is meaningfully higher than the 40 percent approval he drew at this point in his first term.”
In addition to their advantage in public perception, Republicans also have a large financial edge over Democrats heading into 2026. “Campaign-finance reports out this week show that the Republican National Committee ended the first half of the year with more than $80 million on hand, compared with $15 million held by the Democrats’ national campaign arm,” the Journal reports.
Moreover, despite uniform Republican control of Washington, Democrats’s fundraising has declined from recent election cycles. The Journal notes that “the Democratic committee raised roughly 20% less than it did in the first six months of 2021, a comparable period in the last midterm cycle, and has in the bank a quarter of what it did four years ago.”
John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who worked on the Journal survey alongside Republican Tony Fabrizio, attempted to diagnose his party’s continued difficulties with voters despite Trump’s unpopularity. “The Democratic brand is so bad that they don’t have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party,” Anzalone said. “Until they reconnect with real voters and working people on who they’re for and what their economic message is, they’re going to have problems.”