Donald Trump is pressing Republicans hard before the US midterm elections 2026, but the latest /Ipsos numbers have Democrats ahead 47% to 36% on the generic congressional ballot. That 11-point edge lands at a moment when Republicans are defending narrow majorities in the House and Senate.
Donald Trump in Dallas
At the Republican convention in Dallas, Trump told supporters, “Pretend I’m on the ticket”. The line fit the broader strategy of making himself the face of the campaign, and he has since held dozens of campaign rallies before next week’s vote.
The numbers behind the race are sharper than the rally language. Republicans hold a 218–214 margin in the House and a 53–47 lead in the Senate, so a shift of only a handful of seats can change control. Voters will also choose governors in 36 states and three US territories, while thousands of state legislative contests are on the ballot too.
/Ipsos numbers
The /Ipsos survey gave Trump a 32% approval rating, and that is the kind of figure that turns a midterm into a referendum. The article says his standing is the lowest of any president before the midterms since Harry Truman, which puts his position in unusual territory even before a ballot is cast.
Michael Steele put the stakes bluntly: “Donald Trump nationalised these races, and now they’ll lose seats because of it”. He also said, “He made himself the referendum. Individual candidates wanted to run their individual races but he told them: ‘Put me on the ballot.’ He has political instincts for himself, but no political instincts for the party.”
House and Senate math
That dynamic matters because Republicans are trying to hold both chambers while Trump says he can help them keep control. The polling, the turnout picture and the scale of the early vote point the other way: tens of millions of early votes have already been cast, and habitual Republican turnout is lagging behind Democratic participation in critical battlegrounds.
Bill Clinton lost 54 House seats in 1994. Barack Obama lost 63 in 2010. Trump lost 40 in 2018. Those past results set the frame for this one, where the practical question is not whether the margins move, but how far they move and whether the result rewrites the final two years of Trump’s presidency.
