CNN poll shows Democrats’ turnout edge for midterms (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: New polling ahead of the midterm election shows Democrats are feeling highly motivated to get out and vote later this year. And that could be bad news for Republicans who are hanging on to a slim majority in the House. So let's go to CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enten. What exactly are these poll numbers telling us, Harry?

[00:00:17] Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my goodness gracious. I can't believe that the first year of the Trump administration already pretty much done. We got a midterm election coming up in November. And what are the poll results showing us? Well, you know, that generic congressional ballot, right? That's matching up the Democrats versus the Republicans and the choice for Congress. And what do we see? We see the Democrats with an advantage on that generic ballot. Right now they're ahead by five points. And what I think is so interesting is you look at this five point advantage and it's the same exact advantage that Democrats held among registered voters when you went back to Trump's first term in January of 2018 at this point in the cycle. And why is that so notable? Because I don't know if you remember, Pam, but back in 2018, Democrats were looking to pick up the House majority. Republicans held, of course, the House of Representatives. And Democrats were able to net themselves 40 seats in the House come November. Now, I'm not quite sure they're going to be able to net that many seats this time around, but at least according to our CNN polling at this point, the Democrats lead looks very much the same now as it did back during the 2018 cycle. And that's good news for Democrats. But that's not the only piece of good news in this poll, because, of course, if you know anything about midterm elections, you know, you know that it's about turnout, right? Turnout is lower in a midterm election than it is in a presidential year. And it's all about that motivation to go out there and vote. And this is where I think it gets really interesting for Democrats. So if we break it down by motivation to vote, right, if you look at voters overall, Democrats have that five point advantage, which I mentioned. But look at those extremely motivated to turn out and vote, those who would crawl over those hot coals to go out there and vote. And what do we see? We see that Democrats up by 16 points among those extremely motivated to vote. This makes a lot of sense to me, Pam. Why does it make a lot of sense? Because look at the elections that we had in 2025. We had Virginia governor. We had New Jersey governor. We had those special elections as well across the congressional special elections, as well as those for state legislative elections. And what we saw in those elections in 2025 were two things. One, that Democrats were far more likely to turn out than Republicans. And two, that resulted in Democrats vastly, vastly, vastly outperforming the 2024 baseline. So I think Democrats look at the voters overall. They say, hey, that's not too bad. But they look at the extremely motivated numbers and they say, because if that holds towards November, they think, hey, we got a pretty gosh darn good chance of winning back that House majority.

[00:02:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see how those numbers actually translate in reality. And voters are also expressing their level of confidence and their congressional leaders, right?

[00:03:02] Speaker 2: Yeah. So this is where it gets really interesting, right? Because we see these generic ballot results and you say, OK, you know what? This is good for Democrats. But then you look, OK, at the congressional leaders and say, OK, approve of these congressional leaders for Democrats, just twenty eight percent, just twenty eight percent of Americans approve of the job that the Democratic congressional leaders are doing. Right. For Republicans, it's thirty five percent. So more folks approve of congressional Republican leadership than they do of congressional Democratic leadership. Yet you see that Democrats are leading on that congressional ballot. You go, hmm, that's very interesting. How could that be? Well, there are two reasons for why that is. Number one, Democrats are far less likely to approve of their own leaders than Republicans are. But here is the key nugget. When we're talking about midterm elections, it's about one person really and one person only. And that is the president of the United States. And take a look here. Choice for Congress. If you disapprove of Trump and fifty nine percent of voters in our poll disapprove of Trump. Look at this. Seventy six percent, about three in four, in fact, slightly more than three and four say they're going to vote for the Democrats for Congress compared to just eight percent who say they're going to vote for the Republicans for Congress. So, yes, it is absolutely the case that congressional leadership on the Democratic side is not well liked among Democrats compared to what we see historically and not well like compared to what we see among Republicans. But the truth is that may not matter all that much, given that the man who's in charge of the executive branch is Donald John Trump. And right now, the vast majority of Americans and voters don't like the job that he's doing. It kind of reminds me of what we saw back during the 2010 cycle, when there were a lot of folks who didn't like what Republican congressional leadership was doing. And guess what, Pam? It didn't matter because voters didn't like the job that Barack Obama was doing back then. And they punish Democrats who lost control of the House in one of the largest waves. In fact, the largest wave of either of our lifetimes.

[00:05:04] Speaker 1: Yep. All right. Harry Enten, thanks for bringing us the latest with those numbers. Always appreciate it. Great to see you.

[00:05:10] Speaker 3: So let me start with you, the pollster in the group. Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of President Trump being in office. A CNN poll out just a couple days ago shows that a majority of Americans, 58 percent, believe that President Trump's first term in office so far is a failure. How do you interpret a poll like that?

[00:05:26] Speaker 4: So a lot of Republicans are happy with what they've seen. They feel like Donald Trump has delivered on a lot of promises that he's made. And that's the 42 percent in the poll. But there are an awful lot of folks, particularly political independents, many of those younger voters who are part of what ushered Trump into office, who really feel like cost of living has not gotten under control. And that's the main reason why they're feeling agitated. They feel like, hey, we were promised lower cost of living and we didn't get it. And that's why you see that 58 percent number. That's a pretty big warning sign for Republicans headed into the midterms, where typically voters hold the party in power accountable if they think they've gotten things done or not. One year in, Republicans feeling happy, everyone else not as much.

[00:06:05] Speaker 3: So, Brian, the chairman of the Republican National Committee posted on X, quote, Republicans are going to defy history in November because there is nobody who can energize our base more than President Trump. And he linked to a Fox News headline that reads RNC chairman bets on secret weapon to defy midterms history. What do you think? Is that? Listen, sure, it's possible.

[00:06:25] Speaker 5: But history is against us. Right. And and and the economy right now appears to be against us. I think there's a recognition from this administration that they need to do more on the economy. You certainly have Vice President Vance and a lot of teams saying President Trump needs to be more focused on the economy. And there's an argument to be made on the economy. Inflation is lower. Some gas prices, energy costs is lower. There's these things that they can be made, but it's getting lost by the other topics that are taking place, the international affairs. I in my belief is if President Trump is out there campaigning, highlighting the improvements have been made in the economy, they make a stronger case than as opposed to him talking about Greenland or putting more tariffs on our European allies.

[00:07:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I saw there was a graffito on from New York that that was on social media. It was something like we don't want Greenland. We want health care. And Dan Pfeiffer, the former Obama communications director said, you know, not a bad message for the midterms or something like that. President Trump told Reuters in an interview this week, these accomplished so much that, quote, when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election. White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said the president was obviously being facetious.

[00:07:28] Speaker 6: People, there's real reason to have concerns about that. Even if we do have an election, the actions that the president has taken in terms of the executive orders on voting to make it harder for people to vote. I mean, there are real concerns. That being said, I think the most important thing for Democrats and what I found interesting in our poll is, yes, we need to do the work to make sure we have an election, but we have to make the argument to voters that they can trust us to deliver on what we say we're going to do. What was interesting to me in the poll is people kind of said, you know, we're motivated to vote. Democrats are motivated. They don't think that Trump has delivered. That's an opportunity. He's lost younger voters. But some of them said that they feel like, well, we think we'll bet on Democrats. That's not exactly a mandate for a blue wave. We still have to make the argument and prove that we're going to deliver and that part of what we'll deliver is health care, lower costs, reigning in Trump, less focus on fighting battles overseas, more focus on right here at home.

[00:08:27] Speaker 4: And not to interrupt, but to just further your point, I mean, in that CNN poll, only 39 percent of respondents said that they felt like they would be better off if Democrats took control of Congress. It's a poll that otherwise has a lot of really good news for Democrats, but really underscores what Karen said.

[00:08:41] Speaker 3: That's a good point. That number sucks. What do Democrats need to do so that more than 38 percent of the American people, they're the opposition party, they should be riding high ranks.

[00:08:52] Speaker 7: Well, so the problem here is that Trump, he sees an expansive view of the presidency. He believes that no one can stop him. He even said that only his conscience could potentially stop him. His morality. His morality, sorry. His morality, which we should all, that's a joke. But the reality is, is that Congress hasn't served a check. Congress has two responsibilities to serve a check on the president and the administration and to pass legislation that actually helps the American people. And what they have seen, Democrats don't have control of everything. So I think voters actually see those, see that, you know, Congress hasn't done anything to stop this administration and wonder if Democrats are in power, will they do that? Democrats are in power, will they lower health care costs? And so it's, you're right that Democrats actually have to prove to the American people. But I also believe that it's, I think it's 58 percent of Americans believe Trump has gone too far and they want someone to stop him. And that will be Congress's responsibility.

[00:09:46] Speaker 5: But I would add to this, as much as all these things that have taken place, if you look at, you know, people who feel the country is moving in the right directions, it's 10 points better than when he took office, right? You know, Biden had, it was such a low bar for Joe Biden that Trump has improved by 10 points. At least it's moving in the right direction. I think if they can narrow their message strictly in the economy, you're going to continue to see movement.

[00:10:04] Speaker 7: You can't narrow his message, though. I'm sorry. He doesn't know how to have message discipline. And I think a lot of vulnerable Republicans right now are worried about that. There are 18 districts, congressional districts that are key to winning the House, and they are currently leaning Democrat. And that's really bad news.

[00:10:19] Speaker 3: I mean, you can't really argue with that. If you just look at the president's truth social posting this weekend, there really wasn't a lot on affordability. There was quite a bit on, like, outlawing, you know, rival college football games from competing with the Army-Navy game. And that's the nicest one I could cite.

[00:10:35] Speaker 5: Yeah, listen, like I said, any minute, every second that he is not talking about the economy and how he's working to make things better, how energy costs are, all these things, he is hurting himself and the party. And I think the party is trying to get him to focus more on that. And, you know, I think we have an uphill battle because Donald Trump is who he is, but we know what can win.