Supporters of President Donald Trump are less likely to get out and vote in November’s midterms, leaving Republicans facing a worrying enthusiasm gap, according to a new poll.
The latest survey from The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos finds that 79 percent of registered Democrats say they are certain to cast their ballots this fall, compared with just 65 percent of Republicans.
That 14-point gap is the largest the opposition party has recorded since at least 2006 and compares favorably with the five-point edge they had in January 2018, after which they went on to win back the House of Representatives with ease in the middle of Trump’s first term.
Republicans have long known it is difficult to motivate some Trump supporters to turn out for elections when their icon is not on the ballot.
The president himself said as much last November when a string of Republican candidates lost out to Democrats in races in New York, New Jersey and Virginia.
“‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters,” he declared on Truth Social.
The same problem appeared to resurface in the new survey, which found that just 70 percent of people who voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election were intending to vote again in November’s midterms, compared with 85 percent of people who formerly voted for Kamala Harris.
A further 19 percent of people who voted for the president last time said they will “probably” vote in the midterms, while 10 percent said they could not commit beyond saying their chances of turning up were 50-50.
The enthusiasm gap is particularly glaring among younger voters, with only 51 percent of 18-to-39-year-olds who voted for Trump in 2024 saying they are certain to show up again, compared with 77 percent of one-time Harris voters in the same age bracket.
Christopher Nicholas, a GOP strategist from Pennsylvania, said it was up to his party to do more to engage MAGA voters rather than simply dwelling on culture war controversies, telling the Post: “Team Trump has to do a better job of meeting voters where they are.
“Complaining about a Super Bowl halftime show is not meeting voters where they are. Getting in a squabble with Greenland about some medical ship is not meeting voters where they are.”
It was not all good news for Democrats, however. Although the party has flipped seats in tricky states like Georgia, Texas, and Louisiana since Trump’s victory over Harris, around half of voters who say they disapprove of the president are equally convinced that the opposition is “out of touch.”
Similarly, while 48 percent of people surveyed think Trump has made the U.S. economy worse and just 29 percent say he has made it better, 35 percent of voters still back the president to handle cost-of-living issues, with just 33 percent preferring Democrats on that subject.
The stakes will be high in November’s midterms when it comes to the balance of power, given that the Republicans currently control both the House and Senate, but only by slender majorities.
Democrats would only need to pick up three more seats to swing the lower chamber of Congress back their way and they stand a strong chance of doing so, given that they are contesting seats in a number of states that Harris won 15 months ago.
In the Senate, the obstacle is greater, as the opposition would need to flip at least two states the president won by double digits to regain control and make life difficult for him.
