President Donald Trump's approval rating continues to plummet as 2025 draws to a close, but according to The New Republic, the impact of certain policies and messaging strategies will only make him "more unpopular" as 2026 begins and as the midterm elections approach.
On Friday, Perry Bacon, host of New Republic's Right Now podcast, spoke with Grace Segers, one of the outlet's staff writers focused on politics and policy. The conversation focused on Trump's decline in approval rating with voters, which Bacon described as "down from about 50 percent in early January to about 40 percent now." The two writers agreed that Trump was likely to get more unpopular as the 2026 midterms approached, with Bacon predicting that those elections would go well for Democrats and spur more GOP lawmakers to break with the president.
"I anticipate that Trump will get a little more unpopular," Bacon said. "There’s probably a floor of 35 percent or so, but I think he’ll get more unpopular. I think the Democrats will win the House unless the gerrymandering is really changed. The Democrats are big favorites to win the House... I think you’ll see a narrow Senate majority for Democrats. So I think you’re going to see a pretty strong Democratic year, and I think you’re going to see more Republicans on Capitol Hill, governors, and at the state level criticizing Trump. And I think you’re going to see sort of a break from Trump."
Segers agreed, and argued that the impact of Trump policies taking effect in the new year will accelerate voter disapproval. However, she also noted that some of the more unpopular policies from Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" are designed to take effect after the midterms, so they likely won't have much impact on those races.
"What I’m really interested to see is that we are going to begin to see some of the potential political impact of policy changes," Segers said. "You know, a lot of what passed in the reconciliation law over the summer doesn’t go into effect until after the midterms, and that’s very deliberate. But we are going to be seeing some immediate impact. So SNAP work requirements are already in. We are seeing the impact if people drop their healthcare because they can’t afford the double or tripled, quadruple ACA marketplace options. What political impact is that going to have? I think that’s going to be a really interesting dynamic going into 2026."
Much of Trump's approval and disapproval with voters has hinged on the economy. Segers further noted that if the Supreme Court rules in a way that could allow Trump to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, "the economy is going to go into free fall."
"That’s going to be massive," Segers said. "Every single economist that I’ve talked to has told me that is going to be... if that happened, that would be very, very bad."
