U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin, President Donald Trump's nominee to be Homeland Security secretary, wipes his face as he testifies before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmation hearing. (REUTERS)
One poll question has predicted all but one election since 1948, and it now forecasts President Donald Trump and his Republican Party will virtually be boiling in oil by the end of the year.
“Every month in our Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, we ask our sample of U.S. adults two important questions back-to-back,” writes analyst G. Elliot Morris. “First we ask which problem facing the country — such as inflation, immigration, health care, crime, the state of democracy itself, etc. — matters most to them today. Then, we ask each respondent which party would do a better job handling whatever issue they personally pick.”
A year ago, the Democratic Party led that answer by just 4 points. But the Democratic edge has widened almost every month since last spring to the point now where Democrats in the survey’s May poll led Republicans by 13 points on trust to handle the problems Americans identify as their personal most important.
Worse for Trump and the GOP, that edge has widened almost every month since last spring to D+7 by October, D+8 through the winter, then a jump to D+12 in April and D+13 in May.
“That’s a steady climb throughout Trump’s second term so far,” said Morris. “While I wouldn’t make much of how a poll moves in one month, the trend here across multiple surveys is undeniable. … Besides being great for trend analysis, the cool thing about this number is that we have historical data to compare it against.”
Morris said a party can make gains on the Most Important Problem (MIP) trust question for two reasons: Voters drift toward issues where they already trust that party, or the party can gain trust to handle the issues themselves.
“In our data, both are happening for the Democrats today,” confirmed Morris. “On prices, the most-named problem in every wave of our poll, the Democratic margin has grown from D+1 last May to D+10 now, while prices have also risen in salience. But Democrats have also gained on traditionally GOP-coded issues such as immigration, where voters trusted Trump over Harris by 14 points in YouGov’s final 2024 poll (49 percent to 35 percent) but Republicans now lead by just one.
The graph of that data, reveals a steady but level increase across 2025 and 2026, but it explodes upward in March 2026, a few weeks after Trump voluntarily declared war on Iran and hurtled the nation into higher inflation and fuel prices. That blast of inflation appears to have soured voters on other aspects of Trump’s policies, fomenting a general kind of suspicion that continues to hurt him and his party on other topics.