The public approval rating of President Donald Trump rose slightly to 32%, one percentage point above his historic low registered a week earlier, on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections, scheduled for November 3, which will decide which party will control Congress, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on Monday.
Trump’s Republican peers are struggling to maintain the party’s majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The five-day nationwide survey also showed that registered voters broadly preferred Democrats to Republicans, by 47% to 36%, when asked which party they would vote for in the so-called “generic ballot.”
About 11% said they did not know who they would vote for if the election were held today.
This 11-percentage-point gap between Democrats and Republicans was 1 percentage point narrower than in the Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on October 19. The poll concluded on Monday also asked undecided voters which party they leaned toward. Taking their responses into account, the national contest appeared somewhat more competitive, with Democrats leading by 9 percentage points, 50% to 41%.
For the Republicans, losing control of either chamber of Congress could complicate Trump’s agenda in the last two years of his second term as president.
Generic-ballot polls are national surveys that offer an overview of which party the respondents would like to see in command of Congress. While these polls provide a view of national public sentiment, they do not capture the state-by-state and district-by-district nuances of races that determine control of the Senate and the House, races in which Republicans hold some structural advantages.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted online, gathered responses from 1,679 American adults, including 1,280 registered voters, and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points for all adults and 3 points for registered voters.
