Six months ahead of the midterm elections, President Donald Trump’s job approval, the clearest predictor of the ruling party’s performance at the ballot box, seems settled below 40%. This is roughly 2 to 5 points lower than at the comparable point in 2018, Trump’s first midterm cycle, when Republicans lost a net total of 40 seats in the House.
None of the developments that typically produce a rally effect around a president — tax cuts targeted at workers and retirees, populist moves like prescription drug price controls, a foreign conflict framed as a national security imperative, or the latest assassination attempt — have resonated outside Trump’s own coalition.
Among voters who shifted his way in 2024, attrition is real, particularly among independents, Latinos, and younger people. At the same time, the president’s MAGA base remains cohesive and capable of delivering results, most recently securing a slate of primary wins in Indiana against state lawmakers who had opposed Trump’s push to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries to boost his party’s standing in the midterms.
Even though Trump’s endorsement remains highly significant and often decisive in Republican primaries, his favored candidates have performed worse against Democrats across primary and general elections in 2025 than in any year since 2017, winning 33% of the races. To be sure, voters in primary and special elections tend to be more politically engaged and motivated. But Democrats are also showing a broader advantage in midterm enthusiasm, with 79% saying they are “absolutely certain to vote,” slightly higher than MAGA Republicans, at 77%, and far higher than right-leaning voters not aligned with MAGA, at 59%.
The Democratic Party also benefits from improved trust in its ability to handle this cycle’s top electoral issues, polling 4 percentage points ahead of Republicans on the economy, 52% to 48%, and 8 points ahead on inflation, 54% to 46%. Trump’s own approval on these issues is historically low, at 34% and 28%, as more Americans say they are falling behind financially since the start of the war in Iran, at 23% compared with 17% in Feb. 2026.
Trump’s war in Iran is now as unpopular as the Iraq War in 2006, during peak violence, and the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, with 61% of U.S. adults calling it a mistake. Time will tell if Trump’s claims that the situation is under control translate into an actual peace deal. Regardless, it may take months for gasoline prices to come down to prewar levels — possibly too late to buoy Republicans’ chances in a cycle where the cost of living remains paramount.
A month ago, Virginia voters approved a new, Democrat-friendly congressional map to be used in this year’s midterms. Last week, the Supreme Court told Louisiana to redraw the lines of a majority-Black House district, setting a precedent for other Republican-leaning states across the South.
The ruling, which weakened a landmark 1965 law that prevented racial discrimination at the ballot box, is set to usher in a wave of congressional redistricting leading to the 2028 presidential election, as Republicans and Democrats vie for advantage in an increasingly calcified electoral landscape with a shrinking number of competitive House seats.
This cycle, though, Republican options are limited by state-level legislative calendars and concerns that aggressive gerrymandering could backfire by spreading right-leaning voters too thinly over resulting districts. Besides Louisiana, already at work on a new congressional map, we are watching Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina. All in all, the court decision could create as many as four new House seats that favor Republicans this cycle alone — and that does not include Florida, which just approved a new congressional map that could create another two to four Republican-friendly seats.
The court ruling and the new Florida map could finally put Republicans ahead in a race that began with a push to redraw congressional maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio. It was followed by Democratic countermoves in California, Utah, and Virginia that largely cancelled out Republican gains.
On the one hand, a rightward shift of just a few seats could be significant, considering that the past three House elections all delivered single-digit majorities. On the other, Republicans, already likely to lose seats as the party in power, are facing rough political terrain shaped by Trump’s unpopularity and the rising cost of living, for which the Republican-held Congress has struggled to offer coherent policy remedies.
Today, they are trailing Democrats by 6 points on a measure of voters’ preference for a party to represent them in Congress, close to the 7-point deficit they had at a similar point in the 2018 race. But while Democrats outperformed in nearly every election since Trump’s return to office, their House vote share, 49%, still lags the president’s 62% disapproval rating, with many disaffected right-leaning voters inclined to stay home rather than vote Democrat.
President Trump played gracious host to a UK royal visit last week, even lifting some tariffs on Scotch whisky to toast the departing King Charles III and Queen Camilla. He has been far less gracious to other European leaders over their reluctance to support U.S. military action in Iran.
Trump, for example, suggested that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz focus on “fixing his broken Country” and step up his “ineffective” efforts to end the war in Ukraine. He followed up by announcing a 25% tariff on EU cars and trucks, most of them carrying German nameplates, citing noncompliance with a 2025 trade agreement and suggesting that higher levies could help push European car companies to move production stateside. He also authorized the withdrawal of up to 5,000 American troops from German military bases.
Taken together, the president’s rhetoric and actions fit the pattern, carried over from his first term in office, of singling out Germany as an object of pressure within Europe as a result of its combination of three factors that irritate him: a large trade surplus with the U.S., globally visible automakers, and a major U.S./NATO military footprint.
Following a “great call” with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Trump set a July 4 deadline to implement the EU trade deal, taking the 25% tariff on EU autos off the table, at least for the time being. But the Germany troop drawdown is official and backed by precedent: Trump had tried to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany in 2020, only to be overruled by President Biden, and has recently pulled out a thousand troops from Romania. Also, unlike the auto tariff, opposition to the drawdown is bipartisan, with top Republicans in Congress advocating for moving the troops to Eastern Europe to better deter Russia while Democrats accuse Trump of taking Russia’s side in the Ukraine conflict.
Even 5,000 personnel short, the U.S. military footprint in Germany would remain at roughly 31,000 and in Europe overall at around 80,000, above the 76,000 threshold set by Congress. It is unclear, however, if any U.S. law — including the 2026 defense policy law Trump himself signed, which sets a list of hurdles before enabling major changes to U.S. European Command — would stop the president from penalizing NATO allies for failing to help secure the Strait of Hormuz.
The next few weeks will give us a better idea whether Trump’s latest swipe at Berlin is indeed about Berlin, or autos, or about a broader U.S. military shift away from Europe and toward the Indo-Pacific, just as key Trump advisers like Elbridge Colby have long advocated.
