The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump approval is worst ever in new poll

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

President Trump said he would punish the Republican state senators in Indiana who voted against redistricting, and in Tuesday’s primary, almost all of them lost to Trump-backed challengers. We discuss takeaways from the primaries in Indiana and Ohio, plus how voters say they feel about Trump in a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, political reporter Stephen Fowler, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez at cover politics. I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about election results from Indiana and Ohio and what voters are telling us about how they are feeling about Trump and the economy. Stephen, I want to start with Indiana. Last week on the podcast, we talked about how President Trump was trying to punish state senators who voted against redrawing the state's concordering. congressional districts by backing primary challengers for them. Can you tell us what happened in those races? By and large, those incumbents were punished. There were seven incumbent state senators on the ballot. Five of them handily lost. One of them narrowly survived. There's a race that is too close to call where the two candidates are separated by about three votes. So if you're looking at

this in the big picture, Donald Trump, big winner, big success. if you're looking at what it means for the Indiana State Senate. Fundamentally, those candidates don't really have much of a different perspective on policy than the ones who were ousted, but save the question of redistricting and what Trump says. I mean, were voters simply just punishing these lawmakers who decided not to redistrict? Do you think something else was going on here? It is impossible to know in the thousands of people that voted each of these, primary races, whether it was strictly punishment or about something else.

I mean, the millions of dollars of TV ads that were spent weren't explicitly saying, this guy did not vote for redistricting, that's why you should vote me in. It's the typical primary fair of who's the most conservative and who's going to do the best to stop the woke agenda in Deep Red Indiana and so on and so forth. So it's a little bit of a philosophical question that I'm not sure you can have the answer. We do know looking at the rest of Indiana's primary results that there was a bit of an anti-incumbent vibe going on Some of the house incumbents didn't have primary challengers, but for the ones that did actually Most of them actually ended up giving away a sizable number of votes to those primary challengers

Including in one race where the incumbent Jefferson Shreve won by just six percent to an opponent he outraised a one hundred and four to one. And there was another race where the incumbent gave up a lot of votes to somebody who literally didn't file a campaign finance report. So you could say there's something in the water where voters of both parties are interested in something else, even if that's something else, doesn't manifest in the upset oustings that we saw with those particular Senate races. I don't know that we've ever spent so much time talking about state Senate races on this podcast. And I think part of that is because of the millions of dollars. that Trump decided and Trump affiliated groups decided to spend on this election to kind of get back at these folks who did not go along with what Trump wanted. He wanted them to redistrict, wanted to get more seats out of the state. And this was clearly an effort to go in there and try to punish these folks to be able to say, he's the big dog in the party still and that he's going to call the shots here. And clearly that's still the case. And it's why a lot of Republican elected.

officials simply don't want to cross Trump and go out there because we saw even the people who voted for Trump's impeachment. You saw the vast majority of them are no longer in Congress. I mean, yeah, looking at Indiana's primary results, you can see how much power Trump still has in the Republican base. But I mean, Domenico, we do have a new NPR, PBS News, Maris poll that does paint a different picture about what his favorability is looking like writ large, like when you're looking beyond just base Republican voters, what did you find? Yeah, primaries are not general elections and they're not the country overall. And this has been the case for a long time with Trump.

It continues to be the case now. He has his worst approval rating in the NPR PBS News, Maris poll, since we started asking about Trump when he got into elected office the first time around. 37% approve of the job that Trump is doing, but 59% disapproval. 51% of people strongly disapproved. So the intensity of opposition that's waiting for a lot of these Republican candidates in a general election is very, very high. Okay. So, Domenico, obviously, like, voters are becoming increasingly unhappy with Trump. Like, what is driving that? Like, where's that coming from? Well, clearly the economy is a top concern. I mean, it's been the top concern for voters for a long time, even back into the Biden administration. I mean, we see in our survey, 63 percent, that the economy is just not working well for them personally. And I found it really interesting because that number is the worst that we've seen in the poll. And there appears to be really a COVID

economic hangover here because pre-COVID in February 2020 when we asked about this, two-thirds said that the economy was working well for them. It's just not the case anymore. You know, prices, supply chain issues just really haven't recovered. Six and 10 say that their area is not affordable for regular families. So when you look at numbers like, that. And then when gas prices are as high as they are in eight and ten, say that gas prices are putting a strain on their budgets and their overall majority blaming Trump for the increase in those gas prices, you know, it's not too hard to draw a couple lines to connect the dots to see what's causing Trump's decline here. I mean, 63% would also tell me that there are some Republicans

who are unhappy with the economy. I mean, what do we know about how Republicans are feeling? I mean, I assume that they're feeling overall happy with the with the president's performance, but like maybe when we get into issues, it's a little different. Well, 80% of Republicans approve of the job that he's doing. It's a little bit softer than where he was when he started his second term. Overall, though, when you look at the net approval from February of 2025 to now, there are really key groups that have dropped off significantly. You're talking about people like rural voters, whites without college degrees, parents of children under 18, men overall, adults in the same. South, men who live in small cities and suburban areas, whites without college degrees, both men and women. These are groups that all approved of the job more than disapproved of the job that Trump was doing in February of 2025. Now all negative. And when you look at that favorability cratering that happened,

it gets to one of the things that I think about in the midterms that's going to be hard to track until we get the general election in November. And that's the people that show up. for President Trump in 2024. They vote for Republicans. And then this go around in the midterms, they stay home and sit on the couch. You know, that favorability cliff that we're talking about doesn't necessarily mean those people will then flip to the Democratic Party. But it might mean in key places and races that there are just fewer Republican voters.

Right. All right. We're going to take a quick break. More in a moment. And we're back. And Stephen, we already talked about Indiana, but I want to know what happened in Ohio. this was the other state with primaries yesterday. Well, there's a U.S. Senate race that you may have heard about and an open governor's race you may have heard about,

but the primary didn't really have anything interesting going on because incumbent Senator John Hustead did not face a primary challenger on the Republican side. And in the governor's race, Democrat Amy Acton, the former state health director, didn't have a primary challenger. And the two that did, Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and former Democratic senator, or Sherrod Brown only had nominal challengers. So there wasn't a lot of drama or a lot of intrigue there at the top of the ticket, but still you had a number of people showing up to the polls. The more relevant portion comes with Ohio's congressional districts. There's 10 Republicans, five Democrats.

Some of those districts were made a little bit more competitive in a recent round of redistricting ordered by state law. So there were a lot of people interested in sorting out those primary candidates. It is notable that even though there are 10 Republicans and five Democrats in Ohio's delegation right now, that there were actually more Democrats who voted in seven of those districts in part because there are some of those sort of reach races that the party hopes that they can flip in this midterm environment. Domenico, we do have from the polling some numbers on voter enthusiasm. I mean, from what you saw, is this sort of not surprising when you look at what happened in Ohio? Well, clearly, Democrats have been overperforming in special election after special election, regular elections.

We're seeing more Democrats show up than not. And it's why in our poll we continue to see Democrats with an edge on what's known as the congressional ballot test when we ask people who they would vote for if elections were held today, a Democrat or Republican in their district. Democrats have a 10 point advantage on that question. It's a pretty big number. And in most years, that would be seen as wave territory numbers. It's a little different this time around because there are just so many fewer competitive seats that it's not clear. Plus, there are some enthusiasm caveats I think Democrats should look at because when you ask who's very enthusiastic about November's elections, Democrats have the edge here. I mean, doubt about it. They have an eight-point advantage. Sixty-one percent of Democrats, only 53 percent of Republicans say that they're very enthusiastic about November's elections. But when you look at groups that are important to Democrats, voters 18 to 29, black voters, Latinos, they're among the lowest who say that they have the highest enthusiasm. But Democrats do have advantages when it comes to whites with college degrees who have trended more in their direction. And they're among the highest to say that they want to vote. And that caveat also on the Republican side that

Stephen was talking about earlier about Trump voters and the ability for Republicans to be able to turn Trump voters out in elections when Trump is not on the ballot, just 47 percent of Trump voters say that they are very enthusiastic about voting compared to 61 percent of those who voted for Democrat Kamala Harris. So clearly an edge for Democrats here are six months out from the election, but some warning signs for both parties. Yeah. I am curious if Trump played a role in Ohio's primaries like he did in Indiana. I mean, did he say anything about candidates there weigh in on those races? Well, one of the reason there was little drama on the Republican side is because Trump endorsed Babake Ramoswamy last year in November, very early, essentially clearing the field for anybody else wanting to throw their hat in the ring. It's part of a larger pattern of Trump endorsing early. earlier than ever in primary contests and playing Kingmaker and really going all in on incumbents so that there's no chance for any upset that he doesn't want to happen.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's just so interesting how primaries, especially as they become less competitive, how much power parties can wield and deciding who gets to stay or who gets to come in. And as lawmakers are, especially in the South, weighing redistricting, I do wonder if they are looking at Indiana. and maybe not Ohio, but looking at those races and thinking like, oh, well, this is now part of my calculus. Well, if you look at South Carolina, which is in the process of trying to finish its regular business and adjourn, there's now a scramble to rewrite the Sine-Di-Di-Adjurment resolution to leave the door open to redistrict after they've left. Today, Tennessee Republicans release their maps to have a completely Republican House delegation. and you've kind of seen this last-minute scramble from Republicans, in part because of the court ruling, the Supreme Court ruling, but at the same time, nobody wants to be on the receiving end of millions of dollars in attack ads saying that you're not conservative enough and you lose a primary to somebody else.

Well, there are some other tests that could be coming down. I'm thinking Louisiana, which is moving from open primaries for the past 50 years to now close party primaries, ostensibly to get rid of Republican Senator Bill Cassidy who voted to impeach Trump. Well, and as another case in point for Kentucky's Senate primary, you just had Trump weigh in with an endorsement for one candidate that also came with a job offer for another one to drop out. And so it is very much Trump's Republican Party. especially when it comes to the primary electorate. And as Domenico noted, there is some softening in support among Republicans and Trump's base, which is a silver lining for Republicans until you consider the general election

and the negative environment that Republicans are facing and everybody but that loyal base saying, hey, we kind of don't like where things are going right now. Yeah, I'm really interested to see what happens in both Kentucky and Louisiana. when it comes to, in particular in Kentucky, Thomas Massey and, you know, someone like Rand Paul, who has, is certainly his own independent streak, said that he's going to be campaigning hard with Massey, that he has the right to speak out as he does. But really, that sort of independence from Trump has been few and far between. And certainly it's been certainly weeded out over the past, you know, five or six years where you have way fewer Republicans likely to. to speak out and a lot more red and a lot more blue, very blue and very red districts, so that the incentive is not to cross the president to appeal to swing voters, but to appeal to the base.

Lots to watch. More interesting primaries on the way. All right. Let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez at Cover Politics. I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. I don't know.