Harry Truman had held the record for the most unpopular president heading into a midterm election, and four separate polls now say he has lost it to the sitting president.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten laid out the collapse on “CNN News Central” on Tuesday, Oct. 20, telling viewers that President Donald Trump has become the most unpopular president heading into a midterm election on record, two weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Four October surveys, all conducted ahead of the midterms, went up on the screen behind Enten. NBC had the president at minus 32, ABC at minus 33, Reuters/Ipsos at minus 35 and the Pew Research Center at minus 38. Truman set the previous worst on record when his net approval hit minus 30 in that same stretch before a midterm, in October 1946, and all four of these numbers sit below it. Democrats lost their majorities in both the House and the Senate that year.
“This is a five-alarm Trumpster fire – that’s what we’re talking about,” Enten told anchor John Berman.
Dragging Republicans Underwater With Him
The Reuters/Ipsos survey puts Trump’s net approval at minus 35, the lowest of his presidency in that poll. That same poll had put him at plus 6 in January 2025, the first month of his second term. His raw approval in that survey fell to 31 percent, the lowest of either of his terms. Among independent voters, Reuters/Ipsos has him at minus 54.
Berman asked Enten whether the numbers were an anomaly. They are not, Enten answered — the pattern repeats poll after poll. He has also reported that Trump carries the highest “strongly disapprove” rating of any president going into a midterm.
The closest historical parallels Enten found were Truman and George W. Bush, who was at minus 15 or worse around his midterm. The president’s party lost control of the House and the Senate in both cases. Historically, Enten said, approval that low before a midterm has taken both chambers down with the president.
No Precedent Back to Roosevelt
New Pew polling put the president’s net approval 38 points underwater, a record low before a midterm, and on Oct. 9 Enten had already called those numbers “laughably bad.” He searched for a precedent back through Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt and found nothing close.
The other figures at that point were nearly as grim. Reuters/Ipsos had the president 33 points underwater, an earlier Ipsos survey from the previous month 34, CNN’s own poll 34, and an Associated Press poll matched Pew at 38. No other president before a midterm had even reached minus 31, Enten said.
“No president I’ve ever seen is in a worse position before a midterm election than President Trump,” Enten said.
The steepest drop came among independents. Pew’s validated voter research found that independents split evenly between Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. By the Oct. 9 segment, the president was 57 points underwater with them, and Enten struggled to find adjectives for the plunge.
A Promise of $5,000 in Kansas
At a Kansas rally on Monday, Oct. 19, the president pledged $5,000 to every adult U.S. citizen if Republicans keep control of both chambers.
Trump has offered his own reading of the history. “Nobody can explain, even presidents, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, when they win,” he said in a January interview. “It makes no sense, even if the president did well, they seem to lose the midterms.”
What Republicans Won’t Say Out Loud
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast: “President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress.” Voters have never faced a clearer choice, Ingle said, between the president’s agenda and what he called the Democrats’ extreme liberal policies and obstruction.
The president launched his war with Iran in February 2026, driving up energy prices, and his political fortunes have deteriorated since. Voters rank the economy and his handling of it near the top of their concerns. Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by 8 points in the RealClearPolling average, and several House districts the president carried by double digits in 2024 are now considered competitive.
The U.S. military has developed new strike plans that could use the GBU-43/B “mother of all bombs” against Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites, U.S. officials told reporters in mid-October.
The environment is about as tough as one could expect, according to Carlos Curbelo, the former Republican congressman who lost his competitive Florida seat during Trump’s first midterm elections in 2018. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House—not in recent weeks, anyway,” Curbelo said.
