Inside New Harvard/Harris 2026 Midterm Poll Shows Close Race Between Democrats And Republicans

Well, it's not a surprise, especially to viewers who are attuned with politics, that President Trump's approval rating has been sliding.

And in our September poll, he hit a low of 42% approval.

And overall, he's within that range of 38% to 42% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

So he's certainly underwater, and this reflects all of the inflation pressures, the economic pressures that consumers and voters are feeling, especially after the Iran conflict started in the March-April timeframe.

But what's fascinating in our poll is that our poll is consistently much closer in terms of the spread between Democrats and Republicans heading into the midterms.

And it really points to a very interesting phenomenon that isn't being discussed very much.

The gap between the president's approval rating and really the midterm horse race, the generic midterm horse race.

So we have Democrats up two points or with the two point lead amongst likely voters.

But when you look at the pool of total voters, all registered voters, it's really a 50-50 tie.

And in general, when you look at all of the polls and you compare President Trump's approval rating versus where the midterm horse race stands, There's usually a 10 point spread and in some cases a 15 point spread between his approval rating and really how close the parties are within the midterm.

This points to a lot of things which we can get into as part of the conversation.

But it really shows that this race, this midterm can really go either way for a wide array of reasons.

And the difficulty when looking at the polls is to understand, you know, are they under weighing the support that Republicans have? Are they under weighing the support that Democrats have? And really which way the bias in the polling is going in order to make as close of an assessment and as accurate and assessment as we can.

I wanted to dive a little deeper in there because Trump's underwater in this poll, but not nearly as badly as he is underwater in other polls.

Your poll has the spread between approval and disapproval at a negative 13.

Another poll, an Economist and YouGov recent poll, has that spread at 25.

And the 2026 generic congressional vote, you have Democrats up by two points.

But according to Real Clear Politics, the average of the most recent polls have Democrats up by around eight and a half points.

What do you think your poll is seeing that perhaps other polls could be missing?