Recent polling is painting a mixed picture for Democrats as they look to chart a path forward in the wake of their loss to President Trump in November.
Trump’s approval rating remains comfortably underwater as he reaches the six-month mark back in office on Sunday. But while Democrats have scored some notable victories in high-profile elections since then, they’ve been unable to pull away from the GOP as the party hopes to regroup for the midterms next year.
Data experts said Democrats’ position has improved since Trump started his second term, but they still have a lot of work to do to win back trust from the American people and be poised to take back control of the House.
“You can’t just be on the attack. You can’t beat something with nothing,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “We have to show and tell what we would do, but I think that we’re on the precipice of a big opportunity, and I hope we take advantage of it.”
Months after Democrats suffered a major blow with Trump sweeping all seven battleground states and the GOP winning control of both houses of Congress, the party is still seeking to put the pieces back together.
Halfway through the first year of Trump’s term, many data points on where the party stands don’t appear bright.
Views of the Democratic Party have been at historic lows for a couple months. The percentage of registered voters who view the party favorably reached some of its lowest levels since at least the start of Trump’s first term in office in YouGov’s average, more than 20 points underwater as of late May.
A CNN poll released Thursday found only 28 percent of Americans view the party favorably, a record low in the history of the outlet’s polling dating back to 1992.
Views of the Republican Party also aren’t strong but haven’t been quite as poor.
A poll conducted by the Democratic super PAC Unite the Country found recently that voters perceive the party as “out of touch,” “woke” and “weak.” An AP-NORC poll found just over a third of Democrats are optimistic about the party’s future, compared to 57 percent last July.
Surveys have also shown widespread frustration with Democratic leaders and a feeling that Democrats aren’t fighting hard enough against the Trump administration and for their voters.
This has been particularly pointed against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), whose favorability rating has been stuck in the mid-to-upper 20s throughout Trump’s second term, according to the Decision Desk HQ polling average, though his net favorability has improved somewhat more recently.
Scott Tranter, the director of data science for DDHQ, said Democrats are still trying to form a coherent message but don’t have a clear “rallying cry,” though some of them have received attention as they’ve been arrested during faceoffs with Trump administration officials or visited detention centers like “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida.
“It’s pretty clear that Schumer is not the guy, just based on his approval rating,” Tranter said. “And one can make the argument that [former House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s approval rating was underwater as well, but… Schumer doesn’t seem to have that kind of gravitas that she did.”
One other common trend in polling over these months is a lack of agreement over who the leader of the Democratic Party is after 2024.
A CNN poll found in March that 30 percent of Democrats didn’t give a name to respond to a question about which leader best reflects the party’s core values. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) had the most support but with only 10 percent, while former Vice President Harris had 9 percent and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had 8 percent.
An Emerson College Poll found Democrats widely split among the field of potential 2028 presidential contenders, with the leading candidate only with 16 percent.
Tranter said this dynamic is somewhat to be expected following a party’s loss in the presidential election, pointing to the first months of 2005 for Democrats after John Kerry’s loss and of 2013 for Republicans after Mitt Romney’s loss.
“Coming out of Kerry, the Democrats were also in the wilderness,” he said. “And so I think that the takeaway is that every time something like this happens, each party goes through its transformation. I think we’re still pretty early on it.”
But the data does show some reasons to be optimistic for Democrats.
Trump’s approval rating and favorability have consistently been underwater, not abnormal for him even as he won the November election, but still presenting Democrats with an opportunity.
Democrats have mostly kept a lead in DDHQ’s average of the generic congressional ballot since early March, albeit a small one of a couple points at most. They led on that question by 1 point as of Monday.
The same CNN poll showing disapproval of the Democratic Party found Democrats are more motivated to vote in next year’s midterms. A poll from Republican pollster Fabrizio Ward found Republicans trailing the generic ballot in 28 battleground House districts.
Democrats also expressed hope that the passage of Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” extending Trump’s tax cuts and increasing border security funding but also cutting Medicaid spending, could give them the opportunity they’ve been looking for.
Multiple polls have shown at least a plurality of registered voters or adults oppose it, though many also say they don’t know enough.
“Trump and the Republicans are certainly focused on incredibly unpopular policies that are likely to benefit the Democrats that they deserve leading into the midterms,” said Ryan O’Donnell, the interim executive director of the progressive polling firm Data for Progress. “But Democrats also have to show that they’re hearing people’s concerns and actively offering solutions to those concerns to make their lives better and more affordable.”
Lake said the lack of a clear leader has a positive side, as the 2028 Democratic field will likely feature many showing what the Democratic alternative is to Trump. But she said the process of a leader or a few leaders emerging has been slower than in the past, and she expects that is unlikely to be “fixed” before the 2026 midterms.
That will require having a unified message if no unified leader, she said.
“They need to have a unified voice and a unified plan, and that plan has to include a proactive, populist economic message about what we’re going to do and who we’re going to fight for,” Lake said.
Lake’s polling firm and the Democratic donor network Way to Win partnered to conduct a poll released Thursday evaluating those who voted for President Biden in 2020 but didn’t vote in 2024. The poll, conducted from late April to early June, found many of those voters didn’t like either candidate and didn’t feel that Harris had a strong enough economic message to convince them she would lower costs.
Pollsters also found most of those voters lean toward voting for a Democrat if the midterms were held today.
Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, the co-founder and vice president of Way to Win, said the feelings of regret that respondents indicated they felt about not voting, particularly as relates to the Medicaid cuts and the cost of living not dropping, give the party an opening.
She said the poll, showing the most anguish about cuts to programs that help children and Medicaid, was taken before the law’s passage, but those concerns are coming to fruition now.
“I think you can use that, right? You could leverage that to say, ‘The thing you care about the most is the thing that is actually happening. And so you need to come and be a part of [the] opposition to this,’” Fernandez Ancona said.
And the firm’s poll, along with other polling, has shown Democrats want their party to go on offense.
“The table has been set,” she said. “So the question is, will we be able to take advantage of it? Will we really lean in? Will we not shy away from actually going on offense about this bill? It’s all about, can we seize the opportunity?”
