Democrats tumble in new poll
President Donald Trump’s approval rating remains underwater. But Democrats are faring worse, according to a new poll from The Wall Street Journal released Saturday.
The new survey, conducted by Democratic pollster John Anzalone and Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, found Democrats’ popularity at its lowest point in three decades of WSJ polling, with 63 percent of voters holding an unfavorable view of the party.
Only 33 percent of voters hold a favorable view of Democrats, with a meager 8 percent holding a “very favorable” opinion, for a net negative favorability of 30 percentage points.
While voters still have significant concerns over the president’s and the Republican Party’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs and foreign policy, the majority of respondents nonetheless say they trust Republicans more to handle those issues in Congress.
Despite criticism of the administration’s handling of inflation — disapproval outweighed approval by 11 points in the poll — the Republican Party, by 10 points, is trusted more than Democrats to deal with inflation.
That’s the same case when it comes to thoughts on the president’s drastic tariffs policy.
By 17 points, voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of tariffs, while still trusting Republicans more on the issue to Democrats by 7 points.
Health care and vaccine policy are the only two policy issues in which respondents favor Democrats to Republicans on.
Both Trump and the Republican Party at large are also disliked by more Americans than liked, but by far lower margins than Democrats in this survey. The president has a -7 point net unfavorability, while the GOP is at -11 in the WSJ survey.
The Journal poll has found Trump’s favorability rating to be relatively stable through the beginning of his second term. But other recent surveys have found far lower approval ratings for Trump.
“The Democratic brand is so bad that they don’t have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party,” Anzalone told the newspaper. “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.”
Despite widespread irritation of Democrats, voters still said that if an election was held today, they would back a Democrat for Congress over a Republican by 3 points, 46 to 43 percent. It’s still a drop from this time in 2017, six months into Trump’s first term, when Democrats held an 8-point advantage in that category.
The Journal polled 1,500 registered voters, conducted from July 16-20 by landline and cellphone. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.