WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s approval rating remains near a record low ahead of the congressional elections, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows.
The results of the five-day nationwide poll also showed signs the race between Democrats and Republicans could be tightening ahead of Election Day.
Some 46 percent of registered voters in the poll said they would pick Democrats in congressional elections, compared to 38 percent who picked Republicans, in what is known as a “generic ballot” question.
That 8 percentage point advantage for Democrats was narrower than in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted a week earlier, when Democrats led by 11 points.
Generic ballot polls are national polls that provide an overall view of which party voters would like to see in charge in Congress.
While these polls provide a view of national public sentiment, they do not capture the nuances of the state-by-state and district-by-district contests that determine control of the US Senate and US House, contests in which Republicans hold some structural advantages.
Some 32 percent of respondents said they approved of the job Trump was doing in the White House, unchanged from a week earlier and just above his record-low reading of 31 percent two weeks ago.
Among registered voters, some 50 percent of independents said they saw their vote in congressional elections as a vote against Trump, compared with 13 percent who said it was a vote for Trump and 33 percent who said the president wasn’t a factor in their vote.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1765 US adults online and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Facing elections that could cost his party control of Congress, President Donald Trump spent his last major speech before the midterms talking about pipes and paint.
Trump ruminated on his Washington renovations, new sod, the White House’s helipad, a grand new arch and the recently reopened Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during a 54-minute speech that the White House billed as part of the president’s closing argument before voters cast their ballots.
Facing a towering marble statue of Abraham Lincoln, Trump joked he would soon rename the pool in his own honor rather than after the 16th president, credited with helping end slavery and preserving the Union amid the Civil War.
Trump ran through a series of pool renovations, spoke without providing evidence about vandals’ attempts to damage the pool and offered updates on other projects he said would beautify the nation’s capital.
“I decided to get involved in this, especially over the last few months, and we’ve done, I think, a really great job,” Trump said.
Democrats favoured to win house
Tuesday’s elections will determine whether President Trump’s Republicans retain control of Congress. Nonpartisan analysts generally favour Democrats’ chances of winning a majority in the House of Representatives and see the Senate as competitive.
“For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” President Trump said. “But we gave this a very strong shot.”
Many Republican strategists privately said they wanted President Trump to focus his pitch to voters squarely on kitchen-table economic issues. But on a nationwide tour that has included 28 rallies in 19 states since October 1, Trump has delivered lengthy asides on other topics. Those include projects ranging from a Potomac River golf course to the Kennedy Center.
Democratic control of Congress would allow the president’s opposition to open wide-ranging investigations of the president and his cabinet officials. President Trump’s projects on the White House grounds and the National Mall could be ripe for those inquiries because he pursued many without congressional approval and they have faced legal challenges.
Jacob Bogage, Nandita Bose, Jason Lange, Reuters
