On Election Eve, a Final National Poll Puts Trump's Approval at 32 Percent and Democrats Ahead 46 to 38 for Congress
The last Reuters/Ipsos reading before the vote finds the president near a record low, a broad share of voters treating Tuesday as a vote about him, and a generic-ballot race that is tightening as it closes.
The final national snapshot before Election Day is not a comfortable one for the White House. President Donald Trump's approval rating held at 32 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday - unchanged from a week earlier and just above his record-low reading of 31 percent two weeks ago, Reuters reported. A broad swath of the electorate, the poll found, sees a vote in Tuesday's congressional elections as a way to oppose the Republican president, even though his name is not on the ballot.
On the question that stands in for the House fight - the generic ballot, which asks voters which party they would pick for Congress - 46 percent of registered voters chose Democrats and 38 percent chose Republicans. Reuters noted signs in the five-day poll that the race between the parties could be tightening ahead of Election Day, a caution that matters in a midterm where control of Congress will be decided district by district, including Florida's Panhandle seats.
The method, for readers weighing the numbers: the poll surveyed 1,765 U.S. adults online over five days and carries a margin of error of 2 percentage points. What it cannot do is call Escambia County - and this county has already spoken at record volume, with 46,194 in-person early ballots cast, the most for a midterm since Florida began early voting in 2004. Tuesday's turnout here will test which story is truer locally: the national mood the poll measured, or the record local habit of showing up.
