President Donald Trump’s approval rating remained near a historic low, with a broad share of the American electorate viewing their vote in Tuesday’s congressional elections as a way to oppose the Republican president, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday.
The five-day national poll results also showed signs that the Democratic and Republican contest may be tightening as Election Day approaches.
About 46% of registered voters in the poll said they would vote for Democrats in the congressional elections, compared with 38% who chose Republicans, in what’s known as a “generic ballot” question.
That eight-point advantage for the Democrats was smaller than in the Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted a week earlier, when Democrats led by 11 points.
Generic ballot polls are national surveys that provide an overview of which party voters would like to see in control of Congress. While these polls offer a view of national public sentiment, they do not capture the nuances of state-by-state and district-by-district contests that determine control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives — contests in which Republicans hold some structural advantages.
About 32% of respondents said they approve of Trump’s job in the White House, unchanged from the previous week and slightly above his historic low of 31%, recorded two weeks ago.
Among registered voters, about 50% of independents said they viewed their vote in the congressional elections as a vote against Trump, compared with 13% who said that it was a vote in favor of Trump and 33% who said the president was not a deciding factor in their vote.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1,765 American adults online and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
