Dems, curb your enthusiasm

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By any metric, Tuesday's elections were a blowout. Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani is the new mayor of New York City. The new Democratic governors in Virginia and New Jersey won with double-digit margins. Voter turnout was off the charts.

Democrats' wins speak to Trump's unpopularity, the chaos that has accompanied his administration and voters' continuing frustration with persistently high prices. The GOP has been warned.

But a year out from the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats are still at a structural disadvantage. During the Biden era, Republicans began to outnumber Democrats nationwide, upending an advantage Democrats had held since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Last year, a larger share of Americans identified as Republican than at any time since 1991.

These numbers have softened somewhat as we've gotten deeper into 2025. According to Gallup polling, 43% of Americans lean Republican compared to 46% who lean Democratic, although pollsters like EPPC's Henry Olsen have argued that among registered voters, the GOP maintains a slight edge.

But nationwide, Republicans remain more popular than Democrats. More Americans (39%) hold favorable views of the Republican Party, while 35% hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party, according to a PPRI/Brookings poll released in late October.

Approval ratings of the Democratic Party remain at a historic low. This, after a year of the Trump Administration and Republican control of Congress. If this doesn't temper liberals' “No Kings” buzz, it should.

Even before Tuesday's blowout, I'd been hearing Democrats practically gleeful at stats showing that most Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction. This, combined with tariff tensions, labor market weakness and the fact that midterms usually swing towards the party out of power, are fueling Democrats' hope that things are finally turning in their favor. Tuesday's state and local elections seem to cement that hypothesis.

But call me skeptical about how this plays out nationally a year from now. It's true that Trump faces a growing unpopularity gap. The PRRI/Brookings study found that 43% of Americans approve of the job that Trump is doing as president, while a majority (54%) disapprove. This is the highest President Trump's disapproval rating has been in his second term.

Those numbers are hard to spin as anything good for the GOP.

Except. A voter can believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction and still not want to go back to the Biden era of uncontrolled borders and an inflation-stricken economy. Or for that matter, to want to hand things over to the now-enthused Democratic socialist wing.

Dig into the polling data, and Republicans remain more trusted than Democrats on immigration, crime and the deficit, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. And it remains Republicans who are (slightly) more trusted than Democrats on the economy, which is still the biggest issue on Americans' minds.

According to the PRRI/Brookings poll, about two-thirds of Americans say the economy is going in the wrong direction (65%), while one-third say that the economy is going in the right direction (33%). But this outlook is more optimistic than last year (69% wrong, 29% right) than when President Joe Biden was in office. The same goes for immigration. About half of people approve of Trump's actions on the border; but this is a mountain of approval relative to Biden's rating on the same issue.

Does any of this mean that Democrats won't gain seats in the House a year from now, or that they don't have mounting data points suggesting a comeback? No. They likely will gain seats — as is the nature of midterms. But my warning to Democrats is that, as of yet, there is no nationwide mandate to take power away from Republicans.

To the contrary, it's the GOP that has retains a popularity edge, if only a slight one, a year out from midterms. Democrats still have a long way to go, and a lot of work to do.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Abby McCloskey is program director of economic policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

Previously:
• Vouchers aren't enough to fix US schools