Election Polls: Democrats Lead 52-44 in Final Week

The latest election polls show Democrats heading into the final week of the midterm campaign with a clear national lead. Democrats hold an eight-point advantage over Republicans among likely voters in the fight for control of Congress, 52 percent to 44 percent, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll, released one week before Election Day. The same survey puts President Donald Trump’s approval rating at 40 percent, with 59 percent of likely voters disapproving of his performance in office.

The poll was conducted among likely voters, the people most probable to cast a ballot, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. It lands as tens of millions of Americans have already voted and both parties spend their final days trying to turn out supporters. The findings will encourage Democrats, who need only a net gain of three seats to take the House, but the poll also carries warnings: a majority of likely voters want candidates who will bring change, and some swing voters are wary of the direction of the Democratic Party.

Election Polls: What the Marist Survey Found

The headline of the PBS News/NPR/Marist poll is the eight-point Democratic lead on the generic congressional ballot, the question that asks voters which party’s candidate they would support for Congress in their district. Among likely voters, 52 percent chose the Democratic candidate and 44 percent chose the Republican, a margin that would be enough, if it held, to deliver the House to the Democrats and to put the Senate within reach.

The survey’s deeper findings explain why the Democrats are ahead. Fifty-five percent of likely voters said it is more important in this election to vote for candidates with new ideas who will bring about change, a sentiment that works in favour of the party out of power and against incumbents. The figure was a tick higher among registered voters, at 57 percent.

The poll also found that the president himself is the central issue of the election, even though his name appears on no ballot. Forty-four percent of likely voters said their vote would be one against Trump, double the 21 percent who said their vote would be one for him. In the 2024 presidential election, by contrast, 55 percent of those who voted for Trump said their vote was for their candidate, according to exit polls. The midterm has become a referendum on the president, and it is the dynamic the White House has been trying to reverse with a final-week campaign blitz.

The human detail comes from the voters the poll interviewed. Chris Agan, a 43-year-old Democrat in Tyler, Texas, said he had never seen himself as an impassioned midterm voter until this year. “This year is different. This year, it feels like every opportunity to vote is a referendum against the party in power,” he said. Agan is backing Democrat James Talarico over Republican Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race.

But the poll also contains a warning for Democrats. Among independents, a higher share thought the Democratic candidate would win, but some swing voters said they were put off by the direction of parts of the Democratic Party. Matthew Schroder, a 38-year-old independent living in Charlotte, North Carolina, backed Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024. “What I have seen on the left-hand side is a little bit more of an embrace of democratic socialism, which I just oppose completely,” he said. Schroder is supporting Republican Michael Whatley over Democrat Roy Cooper in North Carolina’s closely watched Senate race.

Trump Approval Rating: Other Polls Tell a Similar Story

The PBS News/NPR/Marist poll is not an outlier. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday found the president’s public approval rating at 32 percent, up a percentage point from last week’s record low, ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. The five-day nationwide poll also showed that registered voters broadly favoured Democrats over Republicans by 47 percent to 36 percent when asked which party they would pick for Congress, with 11 percent saying they did not know. When undecided voters were asked which party they were leaning towards, the Democrats led by nine percentage points, 50 percent to 41 percent.

A separate analysis by polling analyst G. Elliott Morris, published in his Strength in Numbers newsletter, found that Democrats have opened their largest generic-ballot lead in the 17 waves of his survey since May 2025. Among registered voters, 52 percent said they would vote for the Democratic candidate for the House in their district and 41 percent for the Republican candidate. Among likely voters, Democrats led 54 percent to 42 percent. The same analysis put Trump’s job approval at 34 percent, with 62 percent disapproving.

The polling aggregator RealClearPolitics, which averages the major surveys, reported that only 38.2 percent of likely voters approve of Trump’s job performance, while 60.2 percent disapprove. Fifty-seven percent said Trump’s policies were making them financially worse off. An NBC News survey found that 55 percent of registered voters said Trump’s policies had hurt the economy, against 26 percent who said they had helped it. The consistency across pollsters, methods and populations is striking: the president’s standing is weak, the Democrats are ahead, and the economy is the issue that matters most.

There is also a longer trend to consider. A PBS News/NPR/Marist poll conducted on September 14 and 15 showed a 53 to 41 percent Democratic advantage over Republicans among registered voters, along with a 57 to 32 percent Democratic lead among independent voters. The September wave and the October release surveyed different populations, so the two readings are not directly comparable. But together they describe a campaign in which the Democrats have held a clear national lead for at least six weeks.

Early Voting: Nearly 30 Million Ballots Already Cast

While the polls measure opinion, the early voting numbers measure action. As of Monday, nearly 30 million citizens had voted, either through postal ballots or in-person early voting, out of 217 million registered voters. The figure is a reminder that the midterm is not a single day’s event but a weeks-long process, and that a large share of the outcome will already have been decided before Election Day arrives.

Early voting has become a central feature of American elections, and both parties have invested heavily in getting their supporters to the polls before November 3. It allows voters to cast their ballots at their convenience, and it gives campaigns a running count of who has voted and who still needs to be chased. A strong early turnout among their supporters is encouraging for a party, but it also means there are fewer votes left to win on the day itself.

Turnout in midterm elections is usually low by presidential standards. It was 46.2 percent in 2022 and 50 percent in 2018, the highest midterm turnout in decades. The 2026 figure will not be known until after the polls close, but the early voting numbers suggest engagement is high, and the outcome will turn, as midterms usually do, on which party’s supporters are more motivated to vote. The Marist poll’s finding that 44 percent of likely voters see their ballot as a vote against the president suggests Democratic motivation is strong, but Republican voters have a powerful counterweight in the president’s own campaigning, which has drawn large crowds in the final week.

Midterm Elections 2026: What Is at Stake

The stakes of the election are enormous. Americans go to the polls on November 3 for midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, governorships and thousands of state-level offices, shaping the final two years of President Trump’s presidency while the president himself is not on any ballot. Every seat in the 435-seat House of Representatives is contested, with 218 required for a majority, and Democrats need a net gain of three seats to take control, following a current standing of 218 Republicans, 214 Democrats, one independent and two vacancies.

A total of 35 Senate seats are contested, comprising 33 in the normal six-year rotation plus special elections in Florida and Ohio, where Republicans hold a 53 to 47 advantage. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to reach 51 for control, with a 50-50 tie broken by Republican Vice President JD Vance. Governors are being elected in 36 states, and 6,139 state legislative seats are regularly contested across 88 of the country’s 99 state legislative chambers.

The money being spent on the election is staggering. Advertising spending for the 2025-26 election cycle is expected to reach about $12 billion, with ad-tracking company AdImpact forecasting $11.6 billion and Kinetiq Political Insights estimating $11.96 billion. The figure exceeds both the previous midterm record of $8.9 billion in 2022 and even the 2024 presidential cycle. The California governor’s primary alone drew $330 million in advertising spending, according to AdImpact, making it the most expensive gubernatorial race on record.

The economy is the issue that dominates the campaign. The inflation rate was 3.7 percent last month, up from 3.4 percent in August, and it bites consumers much harder than the headline figure suggests, because of the soaring prices of fuel and its multiplier effect on food and other items of daily use. The average price of petrol is $4.28 a gallon, and diesel is $6.28 a gallon. During the 2024 election campaign, Trump boasted that he would bring the price of petrol down to $2 a gallon. The gap between that promise and the price at the pump is the kind of detail that voters remember.

What Happens Next

The final week of the campaign will be dominated by the president’s closing blitz. Trump has campaigned in Georgia, Michigan and Mississippi in recent days, and he is scheduled to hold rallies in Texas, Ohio, South Carolina, Florida and Iowa before Election Day, including a stop in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on Thursday, October 29. The rallies are the centrepiece of the Republican effort to turn out the president’s supporters, and they are the party’s answer to the polls.

For the Democrats, the final week is about holding the lead the polls show and converting it into seats. The party’s candidates are spending their last days in the states and districts that will decide control of Congress, and they are banking on the desire for change and the unpopularity of the president to carry them over the line. The warning signs in the Marist poll, that some swing voters are wary of the party’s leftward drift, will be on the minds of candidates in the closest races, where a handful of votes can decide the outcome. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, and whether the polls are right will be known when the votes are counted.

Source: PBS