Democrats At 35-Year Low, WSJ Poll Finds

BY AARON ZITNER

The Democratic Party’s image has eroded to its lowest point in more than three decades, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll, with voters seeing Republicans as better at handling most issues that decide elections.

The new survey finds that 63% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party—the highest share in Journal polls dating to 1990 and 30 points higher than the 33% who hold a favorable view.

That is a far weaker assessment than voters give to either President Trump or the Republican Party; both are viewed more unfavorably than favorably by 7 points and 11 points, respectively. A mere 8% of voters view the Democrats “very favorably,” compared with 19% who show that level of enthusiasm for the GOP.

Democrats have been hoping that a voter backlash against the GOP president will be powerful enough to restore their majority in the House in next year’s elections, much as it did during Trump’s first term. But the Journal poll suggests that the party hasn’t yet accomplished a needed first step in that plan: Persuading voters they can do a

better job than Trump’s party.

On the whole, voters disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs and foreign policy. And yet in each case, the new Journal poll found, voters nonetheless said they trust Republicans rather than Democrats to handle those same issues in Congress.

In some cases, the disparities are striking. Disapproval of Trump’s handling of inflation outweighs approval by 11 points, and yet the GOP is trusted more than Democrats to handle inflation by 10 points. By 17 points, voters disapprove rather than approve of Trump’s handling of tariffs, and yet Republicans are trusted more than Democrats on the issue by 7 points.

Voters have significant concerns about the centerpiece of Trump’s agenda—his immigration policies—opposing some of his deportation tactics by double-digit numbers. And yet they trust congressional Republicans more than Democrats on immigration by 17 points and on handling illegal immigration by 24 points.

The only issues on which voters prefer congressional Democrats to Republicans, among the 10 tested in the Journal survey, are healthcare and vaccine policy.

“The Democratic brand is so bad that they don’t have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party,” said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who worked on the Journal survey with Republican Tony Fabrizio. “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.”

This week, the House of Representatives started its summer recess, and Democrats are planning to use the coming weeks to hold town hall meetings across the country, including in Republican-held House districts, to make the case against Trump’s agenda and norm-breaking governing style. They are hoping for a repeat of this spring’s recess, when angry voters flooded into town hall meetings, heckling Republican lawmakers and challenging them to do more to push back against Trump.

Because anger is a stronger motivator to vote than satisfaction, the angry town hall meetings suggested to many Democrats that the next election could look something like Trump’s first midterm, in 2018, when Republicans lost at least 40 House seats and their majority in the chamber, restoring Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi to the speaker’s office. The party needs to win only a few seats to retake control of the House, where Republicans hold a 219-212 advantage, with four seats vacant. Democratic prospects are more remote in the Senate, where the party and its allies hold 47 of the 100 seats.

But the new Journal survey shows that the political environment today looks different now than in Trump’s first term.

At about this point in 2017, more voters called themselves Democrats than Republicans by 6 percentage points in Journal polling. The Democratic tilt meant that many Republicans, in a sense, were running uphill even before they started, depending on the makeup of their House district.

Now, more voters identify as Republicans than as Democrats, a significant change in the structure of the electorate— and a rarity in politics. Republicans last year built their first durable lead in more than three decades in party identification, and they have maintained that lead today. In the new Journal survey, more voters identify as Republicans than as Democrats by 1 percentage point, and the GOP led by 4 points in the April poll.

When asked how they would vote if the election were today, more voters in the new Journal poll said they would back a Democrat for Congress over a Republican by 3 points, 46% to 43%. That is a significant advantage for the Democrats at this early stage. But at this point in 2017, the Democratic lead was 8 percentage points.

Trump’s job approval rating, at 46%, is lower than the 52% who disapprove of his performance in office. But it is meaningfully higher than the 40% approval he drew at this point in his first term.

“We were already watching the tide moving out for the Republican Party by this point in 2017, and that’s not where we are today,” said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster not connected to the Journal survey. “And that’s worth jumping up and down and trying to explain: how much more competitive Trump and the Republicans are today than in 2017.”

It is still early to consider how voters will make their choices for Congress in the fall of next year. But the Journal poll and other data offer important information that will guide the two parties as they invest billions of dollars— more than $10 billion was spent in the 2022 congressional midterms—in their efforts to influence voters.

Democrats enter the early phases of the election cycle with several advantages in addition to their lead on the question of which party a voter would support today, including signs of higher motivation to vote.

The weight of history favors Democrats, as presidents rarely escape a voter backlash in their first midterm election. McInturff, the Republican pollster, points out that five successive presidents have lost control of Congress.

Trump, with his aggressive agenda and promises to shake up the political establishment, has been the epitome of a change candidate. But in the Journal survey, 51% said the change he is bringing is a form of chaos and dysfunction that will hurt the U.S. By contrast, 45% agree with the alternative statement that he is making needed and helpful changes.

Republicans have built a financial advantage at this early stage of the cycle. 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 Democratic committee raised about 20% less than it did in the first six months of 2021, a comparable period in the last midterm cycle.

The Wall Street Journal poll of 1,500 registered voters was conducted July 16-20 by landline and cellphone, with some respondents invited by text to take the survey online. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.