One of President Donald Trump's longtime pollsters is warning that the working-class white voters who built his political movement are turning on him — and that their disillusionment could cost Republicans control of Congress this fall.
John McLaughlin, who has polled for Trump for years, told The New York Times that those voters are fed up with the Republican Party and may simply stay home in November. Getting them to the polls is critical, he said, before delivering a blunt prediction: "If they don't, we lose the House and the Senate."
The warning came in a Times analysis that traced a remarkable collapse in Trump's economic standing with white voters who don't hold a college degree — the demographic that has anchored his coalition since 2016 and broke for him better than two to one in 2024.
On the eve of the 2018 midterms, the paper found, those voters approved of Trump's handling of the economy by margins of 30 points or more. Today, polls show them disapproving by anywhere from 14 points to north of 30.
Recent surveys put his economic approval with the group across the 30s and 40s: 33 percent in a Fox News poll, 39 percent at CBS News, 40 percent in the NPR/PBS/Marist poll and 43 percent at CNN. On the cost of living specifically, the Times found just 36 percent approved. Fox pegged approval of his inflation handling at 25 percent.
Pollsters in both parties told the paper the slide is being driven by stubbornly high prices for gas and groceries, Trump's tariffs and the war in Iran.
Trump has not done himself many favors on this. The president recently told reporters in the Oval Office, "I love the inflation," after previously brushing off rising gas prices and saying he doesn't factor in Americans' financial strain when deciding how to wind down the Iran war. That last remark, the Times noted, is already running in Democratic attack ads.
His team appears to know it has a problem. Treasury this month rolled out a report touting how workers benefited from last year's tax cuts, and Trump's MAGA Inc. super PAC issued its first statement since the 2024 election — pointedly, about tax relief for the working and middle class.
Democrats see an opening, drawing up plans to compete in whiter, more rural states like Iowa that have trended red for years. They don't need to win blue-collar white voters outright; losing them by less could be enough.
Veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse summed up the bind for the president's party. The only figure capable of re-energizing the base, he said, is the same one who deflated it: "Which is Trump."