Polls Show Democrats Have a Great Shot at Flipping the House

Job approval ratings for Donald Trump have fallen below 40% across RealClearPolitics and Silver Bulletin averages, with net approval deeply negative. With midterm elections approaching, Democrats have opened a significant lead in generic congressional polling for U.S. House elections. Democrats’ generic ballot margins have reached new highs in both averages, exceeding recent historical Republican margins in national House popular votes. In 2024 and 2022, small popular-vote margins produced narrow House control shifts, while 2018 produced a much larger Democratic popular-vote margin and a large House seat swing. Current Democratic polling suggests the party may outperform the vote margin needed to overcome GOP redistricting effects.

"His job-approval ratings have dropped below 40 percent in the RealClearPolitics averages and reached 38.4 percent in the Silver Bulletin averages. The president's net job approval is now deeply underwater: minus-17 percent at RCP and minus-20.1 percent at Silver Bulletin. But perhaps more important, with the midterm elections less than six months away, Democrats are beginning to open up a significant lead in the generic congressional polling that measures voting intentions in U.S. House elections."

"Looking at Democrats' polling over the second Trump term, they've hit new highs for in the generic ballot margin at both RCP (7.2 percent advantage) and Silver Bulletin (6.6 percent advantage). By way of context, Republicans won the 2024 national House popular vote by 2.6 percent and the 2022 national House popular vote by 2.7 percent. In both elections, that translated to a very small margin of control in the House (five seats in 2024 and seven in 2022)."

"Most crucially, Democrats' polling lead in House races now looks likely to outweigh the advantages Republicans achieved via gerrymandering over the last year. G. Elliott Morris recently estimated that due to GOP redistricting efforts, Democrats might need to win the national House popular vote by as much as 4 percent to flip control of the chamber. They're running ahead of that benchmark at present. And as good as the averages look for the Democratic Party right now, the party is doing even better in a couple of recent high-quality national polls."

"A May 15 New York Times-Siena survey showed Democrats leading Republicans in the generic congressional ballot among registered voters by 11 points (50 percent to 39 percent). Earlier"

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