Poll finds voters rejecting Republicans more than embracing Democrats

In Texas, Paxton drew 88% of Republicans; Talarico consolidated 99% of Democrats who voted

The Voter Poll by SSRS found that more than one-quarter of people who backed Republican House candidates said Trump’s tariffs had damaged the economy, and about one-quarter said Trump’s overall policies had made the economy worse. The two potentially overlapping negative responses did not establish opposing factions among Republican voters. The Wall Street Journal reported that more than 60% of voters said Trump’s policies had damaged the economy, indicating that voters were rejecting Republicans more than embracing Democrats. A large poll of midterm voters found that 53% of people who cast ballots held an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, six points more than held a positive view.

The consequences in Senate elections included a fracturing of Republican support and steep losses among independent voters. In Texas, Talarico consolidated 99% of Democrats who voted, while Paxton drew only 88% of Texas Republicans; independents backed Talarico by nearly 30 points. The Wall Street Journal said Trump’s elevation of Paxton, the impeached and indicted attorney general, over a safer choice led voters to elect Democrat Talarico for the first time since 1988. In Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown won his Senate race with 97% of Democrats behind him, while Republican Sen. John Husted drew 90% of Republicans in his bid for a first full term; independents backed Brown by 25 points. Across Ohio, Texas, Kansas and other battleground states, GOP candidates struggled to consolidate Republican voters while Democratic candidates drew close to universal support within their party.

South Carolina voters rejected Darline Graham, the Senate candidate Trump had chosen and whom The Wall Street Journal described as inexperienced, and will send a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in 28 years. In Kentucky, Democrats won a House district in which voters backed Trump by 15 points in 2024. Democrats held at least three Florida House seats that Republicans had redrawn to their advantage, even though voter pools in those areas backed Trump by about 10 points in the last presidential election.

Tom Rath, a former Republican National Committee member in New Hampshire and veteran of multiple presidential campaigns, said, “It’s total carnage.” Jason Villalba, a former Republican House member in Texas, where Democrats won races for the Senate and governor, said, “What occurred today was a tectonic shift in American politics. Seismic is not big enough to describe what has occurred.” Villalba added, “It’s an abject repudiation of MAGA, of Trump and of Trumpism across the board.” Greg Strimple, a Republican pollster based in Idaho, called the outcome “a complete repudiation of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.”

The Wall Street Journal described Tuesday’s losses as one of the most decisive repudiations of a president in modern history and said it was rare for a president to trade away so much political support so quickly. Trump had re-entered the White House with advantages he lacked in his first term: a victory in the popular vote, aides eager to expand his authority and cultural currency that had NFL players doing the “Trump dance” in the end zone. Only two years later, the Journal said his political standing had collapsed, attributing that change to a dramatic miscalculation of his power to shape events. A war of choice with Iran and tariffs imposed on U.S. trading partners, the Journal said, betrayed his promise to avoid foreign entanglements and tame inflation, while extraordinary interventions in the party’s primaries left Republicans with an unusually weak slate of candidates. Voters whom Trump believed would stay walked away, handing Democrats control of the House and Senate and leaving Trump weakened for his final two years in office. The result produced losses that either party could have barely imagined a year earlier.

The Journal said the election exposed the risk Trump had taken with a governing strategy that leaned heavily into exciting his MAGA base with an immigration crackdown, a battle against diversity measures in universities and businesses and an “own the libs” social media presence. It said that strategy alienated much of the rest of the country, leaving Trump politically exposed when his hold on Republican voters began to slip this year. The results also showed that even many Republicans opposed his policies. The Journal said Trump’s MAGA movement, once an asset that supported him with rare intensity, was now damaged, if not fractured. His loyal political base had allowed him to control the Republican-led Congress as he claimed unusual authority to slash federal agencies and take other actions without lawmakers’ approval.

Strimple said “Soft Republicans” and Republican-leaning independents abandoned the party, a process he thought began with the ICE shootings of two protesters, both U.S. citizens, early this year in Minneapolis. “That said Trump had gone too far with some of his agenda items,” Strimple said. Rath said Trump redefined the Republican Party and, in the process, made it smaller by chasing away anyone he saw as disloyal. “While it’s conservative, it needs the Republican middle to go along with it. When you publicly say for six or eight years, ‘No, we don’t want you, go someplace else,’ sooner or later they get the message—and the party is paying the price for it,” he said.

Steve Israel, a former Democratic congressman from New York who led the party’s House re-election campaign for four years, said, “This is what happens when you govern by impulse.” He continued, “This is what happens when you’re not stepping back and analyzing what you need to do, but just throwing your elbows out and plunging forward.” The Journal described Trump as a president accustomed to creating his own political weather system and blowing through the traditional guardrails on executive powers. He now faces a Democratic-led House and Senate that promise to try to reverse much of his agenda. Democrats, meanwhile, will come under pressure from their own angry and restive voters to investigate Trump’s financial gains in office, restore health insurance programs cut by the GOP and rein in deportations.

The result not only changes the power structure in Congress but opens the prospect that Democrats can win states such as Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina in the 2028 presidential election. Those states had backed Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 before swinging heavily behind Trump. Even Florida, which the Journal described as Trump’s adopted state and the home base of the MAGA movement, may return as a presidential battleground after Trump won it three times.

Rep. Byron Donalds was elected Florida’s first Black governor, but his margin was just over 1 percentage point in near-final tallies, a substantial deterioration from the 19-point victory Gov. Ron DeSantis won in 2022. Ohio, Iowa and Texas elected Democrats as governors on Tuesday, offices Republicans had held in all three states. The Journal said those governor victories represented a potential advantage for Democrats in the 2028 presidential race. Preliminary results suggested a lopsided defeat for Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas.

“I’m just overwhelmed,” said Villalba as he considered the Texas results. “I had no expectation the wave would be this epic.” One question remains open: whether the Democratic gains are transitory or can last beyond Trump’s term in office. The polling so far indicates that voters were rejecting Republican candidates and Trump’s policies rather than embracing the opposition.