ABC News(NEW YORK) — A majority of Americans prefer to see the next Congress controlled by the Democrats to counter President Donald Trump rather than the Republicans to support him — but without the level of anti-Trump motivation the opposition party may be banking on.
Despite Trump’s historically low approval rating, opposition to him is not producing appreciably more 2018 voting intention than is support for him, the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds. That’s a challenge for Democrats because their midterm turnout typically is low.
There is a Democratic preference: Among all adults, 53 percent say they’d prefer to see the Democrats take control of Congress “to act as a check on Trump,” vs. 35 percent who’d like to see the GOP retain control “to support Trump’s agenda.” That said, among registered voters, it’s a 52-38 percent split, and among likely voters, 50-41 percent — the Democratic margin drawing in from 18 to 14 to 9 points as voting likelihood increases.
Moreover, 51 percent of registered voters say Trump won’t be a factor in their vote for Congress. The rest split closely between saying they’d vote to support Trump (20 percent) or to oppose him (24 percent), a non-significant gap.
The division is also narrower than in the past, further indicating no outsized impact of Trump’s unpopularity at this point. Ahead of the 2014 midterms, registered voters said they’d cast their vote to oppose rather than support Barack Obama by a 10-point margin, and the gap against George W. Bush was 14 points in November 2006, both bigger than the scant 4-point difference today.
Nor does either side have an edge in enthusiasm: Eighty-four percent of anti-Trump registered voters say it’s extremely or very important to them to vote to oppose him in the midterms. Eighty-two percent of pro-Trump registered voters are as strongly committed to supporting him.
There’s also little difference between potential new midterm voters — those who say they’ll vote in 2018, but didn’t in 2014 — and off-year veterans. A fifth of potential new voters say they’d vote to support Trump, while 28 percent say they’d vote to oppose him; it’s 22 and 24 percent among registered return voters.
Naturally, intention to vote to support Trump peaks among those in his own party in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. Fifty-two percent of registered Republicans say they’ll vote to back up the president, while a smaller share of registered Democrats, 41 percent, say they’ll vote to oppose him. Independents, for their part, are most likely to say Trump won’t be a factor in their vote, 62 percent; among the rest slightly more are in opposition than in support, 22 vs. 13 percent.
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