Democratic registered voters are far more motivated right now than Republicans. While the party has a 5-point edge on the generic ballot, among those who say they’re deeply motivated to vote, that advantage expands to a massive 16 points.
Democrats enter this year with a chance to capitalize on public dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled government in Washington. CNN’s poll found a majority of Americans consider the first year of Trump’s second term to be a failure, with just 29% of independents approving of his job performance.
The generic congressional ballot measures which of the two major parties voters would rather support in an upcoming election. While it does not capture how voters may ultimately respond to the candidates whose names appear in their district, the generic ballot can be an early indicator of which party holds the upper hand nationwide.
In 2018, when Democrats won back the US House in Trump’s first term, Democrats had a similar 5-point edge among registered voters at around the same point in the year. In 2022, when Republicans won a narrow majority during former President Joe Biden’s administration, voters were about evenly split between the two parties.
Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, broad majorities say Democrats in Congress have done too little to oppose Trump and have been ineffective at resisting Republican policies they oppose. They see their party’s caucus as falling particularly short compared with rank-and-file expectations for resisting Republican policies: Seventy-one percent say Democrats in Congress have been ineffective on that score, up 20 points from the 51% who expected a less than effective effort last January when the current Congress convened.
Extremely motivated Democratic-aligned voters are more likely than those who are less motivated to say Democrats in Congress aren’t doing enough to oppose Trump and aren’t effectively opposing Republican policies.
Note that this is entirely driven by negative partisanship, not an argument over ideology. This is about effectively opposing Trump.
Rob Brownstein has a typically excellent analysis. He notes that the Dems may have a narrow chance to take the Senate but they have to get over the hurdle of white working class voters in the northern states. He writes:
Across all these regions, Trump has substantially tightened the GOP grip on this demographic since he emerged as the party’s leader in 2016. Against Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, the exit polls showed Trump winning 69% of White men without a college degree, and 63% of the equivalent women. He won 87% of the working-class White voters who are evangelicals and 54% of those who are not.
One year into Trump’s second term, though, his situation looks more tenuous. A new compilation of all the national polls conducted in 2025 by a bipartisan polling team for NBC and CNBC found Trump’s overall job approval rating remained a commanding 70% among the non-college White men but had slipped to only 56% among the women of that demographic. Some other more recent national surveys, have shown his approval rating among the men sagging into the 55% range, and even slightly into net negative territory with the women; the latest national CNN survey conducted by SRSS put his approval at 53% with the non-college White men and 52% with the women.
PRRI data provided to CNN offers another lens on Trump’s eroding numbers. In a national survey last year, it found that while 77% of the non-college-educated White voters who are evangelical Christians approve of his job performance, blue-collar White voters who are not evangelicals now split almost exactly in half. “Compared to evangelical White working-class Americans, the non-evangelical cohort hold far less favorable views of Trump,” said Robert P. Jones, PRRI president and founder of PRRI. That contrast remains essential to Democratic Senate hopes outside the South.
Trump’s biggest vulnerability with working-class White voters is the same as with all other groups: disappointment that he has not made more progress at controlling the cost of living. Affordability “is where the gap between what Trump seemed to promise and delivered is the largest, and it is also the issue they care most about,” said Democratic pollster Guy Molyneux.
While White working-class voters aren’t as negative on Trump’s economic performance as most other voters, they give him only tepid reviews.
In a January NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, just a narrow majority of the non-college White men (54%) approved of his handling of the economy, while a plurality of the women (48%) disapproved. (The new CNN poll also had a slight majority of the men approving, and the women splitting exactly in half, on his economic performance.) In a mid-December CBS/YouGov survey, only about one-fifth of Whites without a four-year college degree said they were personally better off because of Trump’s economic policies; in the latest CNN poll slightly more of them said his policies have hurt than helped the economy. Similarly, PRRI found that most working-class Whites who are not evangelicals now disapprove of Trump’s economic performance.
The blue-collar White women stand out in their discontent. In the mid-January Marist survey, a stunning 69% of them said the economy is not working for them personally — far more than the number of non-college White men (51%) who agreed. In a December Fox News Poll, blue-collar White women were far more likely to say they are falling behind economically than either college-educated White female voters, or White male voters with or without a degree.
And they are apoplextice about healthcare which explains the Democrats’ unusually hard line on this issue.
One economic concern looms especially large for these working-class women. “In every way they are hypervigilant about health care,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “They are the ones who go to the doctor (with their children), they are the ones who focus on preventive care for their families, and they are the caregivers when somebody gets sick.”
Almost without exception, Democratic strategists believe their best chance to regain ground among working-class White women is to stress the Republican Congress’ choices to cut Medicaid and to end the enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act while passing a tax cut that disproportionately benefited the affluent.
I’m in favor of running on everything, everywhere all at once — the motivated voters in this CNN poll are all about opposition to Trump. But they must also run on his shitty economy and the butchery of the health care system.
Read his whole piece. It’s the best I’ve read about what’s going on with the Democrats this cycle and I think he’s probably right. It’s possible but it’s going to take some deft handling. The key is the white working class women. I kind of think a lot of them aren’t too hot on the raids on day care centers and schools either. They may not like immigrants but this is the kind of stuff that makes you worry for your kids. All it will take is a fairly small percentage to defect which, combined with the incredibly motivated base, might just get this done.